The Effects Of Glosses On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through Reading

Numerous researches have proved that reading is one of the effective ways to promote incidental vocabulary acquisition.What's more,adding glosses to new words in reading materials as an enhancement technique could facilitate incidental vocabulary acquisition better.Recently,researchers home and abroad have started to make evident research on the effects of glosses on incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading,but they haven't reached an agreement on which type of glosses is the most effective.On the basis of the bilingual lexicon,depth of processing theory and involvement load hypothesis,the author designed an experiment to investigate the effects of five types of glosses on incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading.115 students from four parallel classes in Mei Yuan middle school in Shanghai were chosen as subjects,and they were divided into five groups to read two passages with one kind of five types of glosses.After reading,an immediate vocabulary test was arranged and two weeks later,a retention vocabulary test was given.After that,a questionnaire about the preference of types of glosses followed.The research aims at finding out the different effects of five types of glosses on incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading and based on the results,the author gives some suggestions for English teachers,learners and materials editors.The results show that Chinese plus English glosses are the best for incidental vocabulary acquisition in immediate test.Multiple-choice Chinese glosses are the best for words retention in delayed vocabulary test.Multiple-choice Chinese glosses are the most suitable for students with high English proficiency level to acquire vocabulary incidentally and for low level students,Chinese plus English is the best.What's more,most of the students likes Chinese plus English glosses best.This research provides some suggestions for English teaching and study.Firstly,English teachers should combine direct vocabulary teaching in class with students' incidental vocabulary acquisition after class together.Secondly,English learners should learn to choose suitable glossing type for themselves.Thirdly,for material compilers,they should provide different types of glosses to fit the needs of learners with different level learners.