Investigating The Effects Of Glossing Ways And Word Frequency Upon Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In Reading By Different English Proficiency Learners

Numerous theoretical descriptions and empirical studies have been conducted on incidental vocabularyacquisition over several decades, but few empirical studies investigated the effect of learner proficiency andword frequency on incidental vocabulary acquisition under circumstance of L1and L2glosses. Therefore, tofurther explore incidental vocabulary acquisition, the present study attempts to investigate the effects of glossingways and word frequency upon incidental vocabulary acquisition in reading by different English proficiencylearners.The present study consists of six chapters. Chapter one gives a brief introduction of the study including itsbackground, significance and research questions. Chapter two reviews the theories and previous studies onincidental vocabulary acquisition, incidental vocabulary acquisition and glosses, effects of word frequency andlearner proficiency on incidental vocabulary acquisition. Chapter three is the theoretical foundation, namelyword association model vs. concept mediation model, the cognitive load theory and noticing hypothesis.Chapter four describes the research methodology in details, including participants, materials andinstrumentation, research procedures, data collection and date analysis.120subjects at higher and lowerproficiency level groups takes part in the study. Definition selection and filling in blank tasks, containing all20nonsense target words, are adopted immediately and a week after reading the text with L1and L2glosses (i.e.,vocabulary gain test and vocabulary retention test). All data are analyzed via SPSS.V13.0. Chapter Fiveconcentrates on data analysis and discussion. Chapter Six is about conclusions and implications.The findings of the present study can be summarized as follows:1) As to the comparison of L1and L2glosses regardless of subjects’ level, there is no difference in the effect of gain of incidental vocabularyacquisition between the subjects reading the text with L2gloss and the subjects reading the text with L1gloss.2)Based on the results of the immediate test, the higher proficiency subjects gained a significantly greater numberof words through reading than the lower proficiency subjects. In the higher proficiency group, there is littledifference in the effect of gain of incidental vocabulary acquisition between the subjects reading the text with L2gloss and the subjects reading the text with L1gloss. On the contrary, in the lower proficiency group, thesubjects reading the text with L1gloss can get better effect of gain of incidental vocabulary acquisition than thesubjects reading the text with L2gloss.3) For both the higher and lower proficiency groups, vocabulary gain inthe immediate test was superior to vocabulary retention in the delayed test. Moreover, in the higher proficiencygroup, the subjects reading the text with L1gloss have better retention effect than the subjects reading the text with L2gloss. In the lower proficiency group, the subjects reading the text with L1gloss have better retentioneffect than the subjects reading the text with L2gloss. Obviously, L1gloss is more conducive to word retentionthan L2gloss.4) Concerning the effect of frequency and proficiency level on the incidental vocabularyacquisition, word frequency plays a significant role in the current case of incidental vocabulary acquisition.Compared with the higher proficiency group, the lower proficiency group needs more encounters for anunknown word to be acquired.To summarize, the present study helps us gain a deeper understanding of incidental vocabulary acquisitionand has significant implications for English learning and teaching..However, the study has its limitations as well.To further improve future study, the following main limitations should be avoided. Firstly, the gap of L2proficiency between the higher proficiency group and the lower proficiency group is too big and the sample sizefor each group in the study is relatively small. Secondly, there is no pilot study and interviews among thesubjects before and after the experiment. Thirdly, a longer term for retention effect of incidentally acquiring newwords with L1and L2glosses need to be further examined.