A Study On The Effect Of Different Glosses On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through Reading For College Students

Vocabulary is the essential element of language and plays a fundamental role in all language activities. The vocabulary size directly influences second/foreign language learners’ ability in using language. Second/foreign language researchers argue that extensive reading can facilitate incidental vocabulary acquisition and gloss, serving as a way to enhance input in reading, can significantly improve the efficacy of incidental vocabulary acquisition. In recent years, many scholars at home and abroad have conducted researches into glossing languages, glossing ways, and glossing position and so on. However, in terms of glossing languages, only the semantic aspect of words is involved whereas rare research is done to study the phonological part of words. Considering the importance of pronunciation in English learning, it is necessary to give a further study into the effect of phonological glosses on vocabulary learning.Therefore, on the basis of the previous research results and relevant literature, this study, based on the theories of Noticing Hypothesis, Depth of Processing Hypothesis, Information Processing Model, is designed to mainly address the three questions. 1) Do different types of vocabulary gloss have positive effects on Chinese college students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading? 2) Which type of gloss is more effective on learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition in reading in the immediate vocabulary test? 3) Which type of gloss is more effective for retention of words in delayed vocabulary test?In this study, a total of 90 freshmen from three parallel classes of Clinical College of Hebei Medical University were chosen to attend the experiment. The participants were randomly divided into three groups: Chinese gloss plus phonological gloss, Chinese gloss and no gloss. One week before the experiment, a vocabulary test including 11 target words and 19 distractors was implemented to identify the target words. In the experiment, the participants were asked to read the same passage with different gloss types and then to answer the following questions. Upon completion of the reading task, learners were unexpectedly required to take part in an immediate vocabulary test and a following questionnaire. One week later, a delayed vocabulary test was carried out.After the whole experiment, the SPSS software was used to analyze the data. The specific statistic methods are as follows: Firstly, Descriptive Statistics is used to investigate the effect of different types of gloss on Chinese college students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition. Secondly, One-way ANOVA is used to identify whether there is significant difference among three groups in the immediate and delayed vocabulary tests. Thirdly, according to the statistic results, there exists significant difference among three groups, so Post-Hoc Tests is employed to further confirm which two groups are significantly different in the immediate and delayed vocabulary tests. Fourthly, Paired-Sample T Test is to test the degree of the variation between the immediate and delayed vocabulary tests for each gloss type. Fifthly, the Frequency Analysis is used to mainly investigate participants’ attitudes towards phonological gloss.Based on these methods of data statistics, the findings are as follows: Firstly, all the different types of vocabulary gloss have positive effects on Chinese college students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. Secondly, different gloss types differ in their effect on incidental vocabulary acquisition. According to the results of immediate vocabulary test, Chinese gloss plus phonological gloss can best facilitate learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition. Subjects in Chinese glossed condition outperform those in non-glossed condition. Thirdly, in the delayed vocabulary test, Chinese phonological gloss plus phonological gloss is the most effective way of retaining vocabulary knowledge. Subjects in Chinese glossed condition outperform those in non-glossed condition.This paper mainly studies the effect of gloss on second language incident vocabulary acquisition. Targeted at domestic English learners, this study introduces phonological gloss, which combines with semantic gloss, to study the effect on the incidental vocabulary acquisition. This study provides some useful implications for English teachers, English learners and English reading materials. As far as teachers concerned, they should give high priority to pronunciation in order to help students establish the correct pronunciation-semantic connection; impart the related theories on incidental vocabulary acquisition to attract students’ attention on incidental vocabulary acquisition; recommend the appropriate English reading materials with gloss, encourage students to do a lot of reading and try to design the additional practices relating to the target words to consolidate the word retention. For students, they are highly recommended to acquire the new vocabulary through the help of pronunciation; select the English materials with Chinese gloss plus phonological gloss. For English materials compilers, the new words should be glossed with Chinese meaning plus pronunciation to help learners understand the passage better and more effectively acquire the new words within it.