Effects Of Vocabulary Glosses On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In English Reading

In recent decades,researchers have been exploring efficient ways to facilitate students' vocabulary learning in EFL teaching and learning.One such technique that has come under close inspection in recent incidental vocabulary acquisition is vocabulary glossing.Nowadays,it is considered to be one of the major vehicles for incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading.The present study aims to investigate the effects of no gloss,L1(Chinese)gloss and L2(English)gloss on incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading among intermediate level learners.The research is based on the theories related to Depth of Processing Theory and Involvement Load Hypothesis.Two independent variables involved in the present study are two different glossing languages,Chinese and English.The dependent variables are the participants' scores of immediate vocabulary test and delayed vocabulary test.The study attempted to explore the effects of different vocabulary glosses on their incidental vocabulary learning in the immediate and delayed vocabulary test.Meanwhile,it also investigated the participants' attitudes toward learning vocabulary through vocabulary glosses in reading comprehension.A total of 117 Chinese senior high school students participated in this study.They were randomly divided into groups according to gloss conditions: no gloss,L1 gloss and L2 gloss.The participants were first instructed to read materials for a reading comprehension test.Immediately after this,they took an immediate vocabulary test,and a week later they took a delayed vocabulary test.Moreover,a quick survey was carried out right after the immediate vocabulary test to depict students' prior experience in utilizing glosses.Finally,10 of the participants were required to conduct an interview reporting their reactions to the vocabulary glosses for incidental vocabulary acquisition.The results from the data analysis indicated that there was obviously significant difference between no gloss condition and gloss conditions in both two vocabulary tests.In the immediate vocabulary test,there was no significant difference between L1 gloss group and L2 gloss group in the participants' word retention.However,in the delayed vocabulary test,there was a significant difference between L1 gloss group and L2 gloss group,and those who were glossed in L2 surprisingly produced highervocabulary retention than glossed in L1.Moreover,the overall mean scores of glossed conditions on the delayed vocabulary test were significantly higher than the mean scores of the immediate vocabulary test.In addition,the survey and interview results have revealed that the participants favored L1 gloss over L2 gloss,but most of them held the view that L2 gloss would be a more beneficial way to learn the unknown words and promote the word retention than L1 gloss.On the basis of the findings above,several implications can be offered for the English learners,teachers,and reading material compilers.First,glosses should be used to help learners understand new words more accurately,recall their background knowledge,connect it to the text and become less dependent on their teachers.Second,teachers should encourage students to read more materials with glossing after class and instruct them to read materials with different types of glosses.Finally,the compilers of English reading materials should supply different types of glosses to learners at different proficiency levels when designing or developing English reading materials.