An Empirical Study Of The Influence Of Different Glossing Methods On L2Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary is the core of language, without which nothing can be conveyed.Vocabulary learning counts a lot in language learning, and Learners’ vocabulary leveldirectly influences their proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing.Reading is one of the effective ways in facilitating vocabulary acquisition, and lots ofresearches have indicated that learners can incidentally acquire some words duringreading. In addition, compared with the words without vocabulary gloss, the one withvocabulary gloss can be better acquired. In recent years, many experiments have beenconducted to investigate the relationship between different types of vocabularyglossing methods and incidental vocabulary acquisition effects. Most of theresearchers put their focus on vocabulary glosses such as no gloss, single gloss, andmultiple-choice gloss, without considering another glossing way, that is, Chinesesingle gloss plus English examples. Based on the theoretical framework of Krashen’s(1985) Input Hypothesis, Schmidt’s (1990) Notice Hypothesis, Craik&Lockhart’s(1975) Depth of Processing Hypothesis, and Laufer&Hulstijn’s (2001) InvolvementLoad Hypothesis, the present study investigates the effects of different types ofglossing ways on incidental vocabulary acquisition. The research also probes into theinfluence of students’ vocabulary size on incidental vocabulary learning effects.The participants in this study were93non-English majors from Xi’an Universityof Finance and Economics. They were asked to take part in three tests, i.e., aVocabulary Levels Test, the immediate posttest and the one-week later’s delayedposttest. The data collected were processed through the statistical software SPSS17.0.The results of the research show that words can be incidentally learned duringthe process of extensive reading; vocabulary glosses can falicitate incidentalvocabulary learning, and the L1plus L2example gloss proves to be the most effectiveone in incidental vocabulary learning; there is a difference between the learningeffects of the larger vocabulary size group and smaller vocabulary size group, but is not so significant. The conclusions drawn from this study have some implications andgudience to English teachers, students and English book editors.