The Effect Of L1 Glossing And L2 Glossing On L1 Thinking And L2 Reading Comprehension

Glosses are common and useful in foreign language reading.A lot of studies indicate that glosses have a big influence on incidental vocabulary acquisition.However,there are not many studies related to the effect of glosses on reading comprehension and the results vary.In the studies about glossing,almost no one has connected glossing language to thought language before.What is more,the use of L1 thinking has always been inevitable in foreign language learning,while lots of scholars hold the view that to develop foreign language thinking is beneficial for foreign language learning.Thus,in this thesis,L1 glossing,L2 glossing,L1 thinking and L2 thinking are creatively connected and the effect of glossing language on reading comprehension is studied as well.Quantitative research and qualitative research are both used in the study.The subjects are 82 freshmen from School of Chinese language and literature in Shanxi Normal University,who are divided into two experimental classes.Students from Experimental Class A read with L1 glosses while students from Experimental Class B read with L2 glosses.Ten reading texts of CET-4 level and think-aloud protocols are applied to explore the relationship among glossing language,thought language and reading comprehension.In this study,L1 glosses and L2 glosses are used to investigate the effect of them on the subjects' reading comprehension ability and mother tongue thinking.The research questions of this thesis are as follows:(1)Is there any significant difference on students' reading comprehension between the students who read with L1 glosses and the students who read with L2 glosses?(2)Is there any significant difference on the amount of L1 thinking the students use between the two experimental groups?(3)Is there an effective correlation between L1 thinking and L2 reading comprehension in the students1 reading process?SPSS is used to analyze the data of the study and the results show that:(1)There is significant effect of glossing language on reading comprehension.Students who read with L1 glosses perform better than those who read with L2 glosses in reading comprehension.They especially perform well in understanding the facts or details of a text.Moreover,the delayed test also proves that reading with L1 glosses is more beneficial for general students' reading comprehension in the long run.(2)There is significant effect of glossing language on L1 thinking.Actually,most of the students use L1 thinking majority of the time in reading process.However,students who read with L1 glosses use more L1 thinking than those who read with L2 glosses.Likewise,students who read with L2 glosses use more L2 thinking than those who read with L1 glosses.After the students from the two experimental classes have read with different glossing languages for a period of time,it is shown that there is no significant difference between the students from the two classes in using L1 thinking when they read a same text with no gloss at the same time.Besides,it is found that students who read with L1 glosses tend to use more L1 thinking on generalization and induction in comparison to the students who read with L1 glosses.(3)There is a moderate positive correlation between L1 thinking and L2 reading comprehension.In other words,the more L1 thinking the students use in reading,the better performance the students achieve in reading comprehension tests,This means that the use of L1 thinking is helpful for reading comprehension for the subjects in the study.Since we have always been advocating developing foreign language thinking in foreign language teaching and learning,this study suggests that both L1 thinking and L2 thinking play important roles in foreign language teaching and learning.