| Vocabulary,the cornerstone of language learning,plays a crucial role in developing language capacity.In a study of native language learning,Nagy et al.(1985:3)found that a large number of vocabularies of school-age children were acquired incidentally from reading,so they formulated the concept “Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition”,which provided a new perspective for vocabulary acquisition research.In recent years,dozens of studies have verified that providing glossing for new words in reading materials could promote incidental vocabulary acquisition significantly.Nevertheless,few researches have investigated incidental collocation acquisition.In view of this,we take Noticing Hypothesis and Depth of Processing Hypothesis as theoretical foundations,aiming to explore the impacts of glossing language(Chinese or English)and glossing position(Marginal or Endnote)on senior high school students’ incidental collocation acquisition through English reading.The major research questions are as follows.1)In immediate collocation test,are there main effects and interaction effect of glossing language and glossing position on senior high school students’ incidental collocation acquisition through English reading? If so,to what extent?2)In delayed collocation test,are there main effects and interaction effect of glossing language and glossing position on senior high school students’ collocation retention through English reading? If so,to what extent?In this thesis,124 grade one subjects from two parallel classes of a senior high school in Fengcheng city,Jiangxi Province were randomly assigned to four experimental groups.There was no significant difference among four groups in term of their English proficiency.The four experimental groups were required to read a short English passage containing one of the four collocation glossing types(English Marginal Gloss,English Endnote Gloss,Chinese Marginal Gloss and Chinese Endnote Gloss)and complete a summary writing task accordingly within 25 minutes.Afterwards,subjects participated in an immediate collocation test without being informed in advance.One week later,they were required to finish an unexpected delayed collocation test.The experimental data collected from both tests were calculated by SPSS 21.0 employing Descriptive statistical analysis,two-way ANOVA(2×2)and paired sample T test.The major findings showed that:(1)Glossing language had a significant main effect on promoting senior high school students’ incidental collocation acquisition through English reading.To put it another way,Chinese gloss outperformed English gloss significantly in immediate collocation test.However,the significant main effect of glossing language faded away in delayed collocation test.(2)No significant main effect of glossing position was found in immediate or delayed collocation test.In other words,Marginal gloss and Endnote gloss had similar effects on incidental collocation gains and collocation retention.(3)The interaction effect of glossing language and glossing position was not statistically significant,whether in immediate or delayed collocation test.(4)The mean score of four experimental groups in both immediate and delayed collocation tests all reached significant difference.We thus made some conclusions.(1)The form and meaning representations of Chinese were totally different from those of English,so Chinese gloss was more likely to be noticed from English materials.As a result,the Chinese gloss with concise and comprehensible meaning could better facilitate incidental collocation acquisition through English reading.(2)Different glossing position made no significant difference in promoting incidental collocation acquisition or collocation retention,which indicated that readers must figure out the meaning of glossing language to acquire target collocations.Thereby,glossing language rather than glossing position was the key factor to acquiring collocation incidentally through English reading.(3)As the main effect of glossing position was insignificant,it may lead to the inability of the glossing language × glossing position to have a significant interaction effect on collocation acquisition and retention.(4)The mean scores of four groups were significantly lower than those of in delayed collocation test.It indicated that it was difficult to obtain desired collocation retention effect if subjects did not review the target collocations immediately.We agree that glossing plays a stimulating role in senior high school students’ incidental collocation acquisition and collocation retention through English reading.Therefore,English textbook compilers,English teachers and EFL(English as a foreign language)learners should attach great importance to the glossing embedded in the reading materials to better promote incidental collocation acquisition. |
