註解前後字彙推論或檢索對單字學習之影響

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系博士論. 文. Doctoral Dissertation Department of English National Taiwan Normal University. 註解前後字彙推論或檢索對單字學習之影響. Effects of Glossing Preceded by Inference or Followed by Retrieval on Vocabulary Learning. 指導教授：林至. 誠博士. Advisor: Dr. Lin, Chih-cheng 研究生：黃樓. 莉. 中華民國一百零一年七月 July, 2012.

(2) 摘要單字註解有助於字形與字義的正確連結，但是卻有可能讓學生打消推論或檢索字義的念頭。為了提升從文本中學習單字的效果，將註解與推論或檢索結合可能是一個好的解決之道。因此，本研究旨在探討這些結合對台灣學生單字學習之影響。研究對象為台灣一百三十位不認識目標單字的大學生。每人皆讀了一篇有八個目標單字會出現三次的文章。在閱讀時，有一組四十四位學生在單字第一次出現時要推論字義，之後兩次出現則會有註解輔助閱讀；另外一組四十三位學生是單字第一次及最後一次出現時有註解輔助閱讀，但中間那一次要做字義檢索；還有一組四十三位學生則是單字每次出現時皆有註解輔助。每一組中有四位學生要做有聲思考，而他們的資料只限作質性分析之用。閱讀完後，學生馬上考了閱讀測驗、中翻英、英翻中及中選英等三種單字測驗以及填寫註解使用調查。兩週後，學生再次考了中翻英、英翻中及中選英等三種單字測驗以及填寫學習方式偏好及有用性的調查。研究單字表現分析發現兩次註解輔助中加入字義檢索對學生單字學習最有助益、先推論再看到註解的方式遺忘率最高以及推論與檢索的正確性是一個顯著影響單字學習的因素。研究註解使用發現學生對於註解的依賴性隨著註解次數增. i.

(3) 加而減少。研究閱讀表現分析發現不同的學習方式並不會對閱讀造成顯著差異的影響、單字學習和閱讀理解沒有顯著相關、學生在閱讀有註解的段落比較會使用的全局式策略。研究偏好及有用性問卷的分析發現推論加上註解輔助是學生最喜歡以及認為對單字學習及閱讀理解最有用的方式。研究的結論為除了字義推論外，學生可以培養將字形字義做連結、檢索及確認字義的字彙學習模式運用在從閱讀中學習單字上。. 關鍵字：關鍵字：註解、推論、檢索、單字學習. ii.

(4) ABSTRACT Glossing facilitates correct form-meaning connection but may deter students from inferring or retrieving word meaning. To enhance learning from context, combining glossing with inferencing or retrieval may be a good solution. Therefore, the study investigates effects of such combinations on EFL students’ vocabulary learning. One hundred and thirty students from a university in Taiwan participated in the study and all of them did not know the target words. They read a text with eight target words occurring three times in one of the treatment conditions. In the inference-gloss-gloss condition, 44 learners inferred the word meaning in the first word encounter and were provided with glosses for the subsequent two word encounters.. In the gloss-retrieval-gloss condition, 43 learners were provided with. glosses for the first and the last word encounters but they had to retrieve the word meaning in the second word encounter.. In the full glossing condition, 43 learners. were provided with glosses for all the word encounters.. Four learners in each. condition were asked to think aloud during reading and their data were managed separately for qualitative analyses.. Immediately after the treatment, all of them took. a comprehension test and three vocabulary posttests, including a form recall test, a meaning recall test and a meaning recognition test, and filled out a gloss use survey. Two weeks later, they took the same vocabulary posttests in a different item order and. iii.

(5) filled out another questionnaire on preference and perceived usefulness of the interventions. The. analyses. of. their. vocabulary. performances. showed. that. the. gloss-retrieval-gloss condition was the most effective condition, that the forgetting rates were the highest in the inference-gloss-gloss condition, and that correctness of responses during inferencing or retrieval was a significant factor in word gain. The analyses of their gloss use showed that the learners’ reliance on the glosses decreased as the gloss encounter frequency increased.. The analyses of their reading. performances showed that there was neither any significant treatment difference in reading comprehension nor any significant correlation between word gain and comprehension and that the global strategies tended to be used in the glossed segments.. The analyses of the preference and usefulness survey showed that. glossing preceded by inferencing was the most preferred intervention and perceived to be the most useful intervention in vocabulary learning and reading comprehension. The study concludes that in addition to word inferencing, students can be cultivated to apply the word learning pattern of initial form-meaning connection, subsequent retrieval and final confirmation to their learning from context.. Keywords: Gloss, Inference, Retrieval, Vocabulary Learning. iv.

(6) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank many people for their help in my PhD studies. First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Chih-cheng Lin.. I really feel very blessed and honored to have him as my advisor.. He had motivated me academically and spiritually to fulfill all the requirements. Without his patient guidance, cordial encouragement and insightful advice, this dissertation could not have been accomplished. I am also grateful to my committee members, Dr. Hao-jan Chen, Dr. Yu-ling You, Dr. Hsin-chou Huang, and Dr. Yow-yu Lin. Their careful reading and invaluable suggestions greatly helped improve and enrich my research. In addition, I want to thank my classmates, my colleagues, and all the professors who had instructed me and provided assistance for this study. Without their help, I could not have finished this study and completed the PhD program as had been scheduled. Finally, my family deserves my utmost love and appreciation. Their unfailing support was what enabled me to be devoted to my studies. Among them, I need to give special thanks to my cousin, Donald.. He and his friend, Isaac, had sacrificed. their leisure time and worked late for so many nights to design the computer program I needed so that I could carry out this study as had been planned. Without the help of so many people, the completion of my studies would not have been possible.. v.

(7) TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT (CHINESE) ............................................................................................... i ABSTRACT (ENGLISH) .............................................................................................iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................viii LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................... ix CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION ............................................................................. 1 Background and Rationale ..................................................................................... 1 Purpose of This Study ............................................................................................ 7 Research Questions ................................................................................................ 8 Significance of This Study ..................................................................................... 8 Definition of Terms ................................................................................................ 9 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................... 11 Glossing ............................................................................................................... 11 Gloss Presentation ....................................................................................... 28 Gloss Focus .................................................................................................. 37 Gloss Language ........................................................................................... 38 Gloss Form................................................................................................... 44 Others ........................................................................................................... 47 Involvement Load Hypothesis ............................................................................. 49 Lexical Inferencing .............................................................................................. 55 Lexical Retrieval .................................................................................................. 73 Hypotheses ........................................................................................................... 77 CHAPTER THREE METHOD ................................................................................... 81 Participants ........................................................................................................... 81 Non-think-aloud Participants ...................................................................... 82 Think-aloud Participants ............................................................................. 83 Target Words ........................................................................................................ 84 Material ................................................................................................................ 84 Instruments ........................................................................................................... 89 Vocabulary Pretest ....................................................................................... 89 Reading Comprehension Test ....................................................................... 90 Vocabulary Posttests .................................................................................... 90 Questionnaires ............................................................................................. 91 Introspective Data Elicitation .............................................................................. 92 Procedures ............................................................................................................ 94 Scoring ................................................................................................................. 95 Data analysis ........................................................................................................ 97 CHAPTER FOUR RESULTS ................................................................................... 103 Vocabulary Learning Performance..................................................................... 103 Gloss Use ........................................................................................................... 113 Reading Comprehension .................................................................................... 118 Preference and Perceived Usefulness ................................................................ 131 CHAPTER FIVE DISCUSSIONS ............................................................................. 136 Study Overview.................................................................................................. 136 Effects of Interventions on Vocabulary Learning .............................................. 137 The Full Glossing Condition...................................................................... 137 The Gloss-retrieval-gloss Condition .......................................................... 139 vi.

(8) The Inference-gloss-gloss Condition ......................................................... 140 Effects of Interventions on Reading Comprehension ........................................ 144 Preference and Perceived Usefulness ................................................................ 150 CHAPTER SIX CONCLUSION ............................................................................... 153 Summary ............................................................................................................ 153 Pedagogical Implications ................................................................................... 155 Limitations ......................................................................................................... 160 Future Research ................................................................................................. 162 REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 164 APPENDICES ........................................................................................................... 169 Appendix A Sample Paragraphs of the Material ................................................ 169 Appendix B A Vocabulary Checklist ................................................................. 170 Appendix C Reading Comprehension Questions .............................................. 171 Appendix D Vocabulary Posttests ..................................................................... 171 Appendix E Questionnaires ............................................................................... 172 Appendix F Barcroft’s (2002) Lexical Production Scoring Protocol ................ 174 Appendix G Rott’s (2000) Strategy Classification Scheme .............................. 175 Appendix H A Transcription Sample ................................................................. 177. vii.

(9) LIST OF TABLES Table 1 The participants’ major in each condition ..................................................... 82 Table 2 The reading performance on a placement test, course grade and age in each condition ...................................................................................................... 83 Table 3 Strategy coding scheme ................................................................................ 98 Table 4 Relationships between research questions, data collection methods and data analysis procedures .................................................................................... 101 Table 5 Means, standard deviations and learning percentage of word gain measured immediately and 2 weeks later ................................................................... 104 Table 6 Overall multiple comparisons between treatments ..................................... 106 Table 7 Multiple comparisons between treatments on immediate posttests ............ 107 Table 8 Multiple comparisons between treatments on delayed posttests ................ 108 Table 9 The forgetting rate (FR) on each test under each treatment ....................... 108 Table 10 Means and standard deviations of word gain after correct and incorrect responses .................................................................................................... 110 Table 11 Independent-samples t test results between correct and incorrect responses .................................................................................................................... 111 Table 12 Gloss use in the GGG condition................................................................ 114 Table 13 Gloss use in the GRG condition................................................................ 115 Table 14 Gloss use in the IGG condition ................................................................. 116 Table 15 Chi-square value in the gloss use comparisons between treatments ......... 116 Table 16 Means and standard deviations of reading comprehension ...................... 119 Table 17 Correlations between immediate word gain (WG) and reading comprehension (RC) ................................................................................ 130 Table 18 Preference of all the non-think-aloud participants ................................... 132 Table 19 Perceived usefulness of vocabulary learning ........................................... 133 Table 20 Perceived usefulness of reading comprehension ...................................... 134. viii.

(10) LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Huckin and Bloch’s Cognitive Model. ......................................................... 57 Figure 2. A screen shot for the first word encounter in the IGG condition.................. 87 Figure 3. A screen shot for the first word encounter in the GRG and GGG conditions. ........................................................................................................................ 87 Figure 4. A screen shot for the second and third word encounters in the GRG condition. ........................................................................................................................ 88 Figure 5. A screen shot for the second and third word encounters in the IGG and GGG conditions. ...................................................................................................... 88. ix.

(11) CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Background and Rationale The greatest difficulty foreign language readers encounter may well be the huge number of unknown words (Lyman-Hager & Davis, 1996). Although vocabulary is not a sufficient condition to determine reading quality, it plays a crucial role in text comprehension (Laufer, 1997). The relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension is generally believed to be symbiotic and reciprocal. As learners’ vocabulary level increases, so does their comprehension score (Laufer, 1997; Rott, Williams, & Cameron, 2002).. If learners want to understand English written. discourse adequately, it is suggested that they should know 98% of lexical items English in a fictional text (Hu & Nation, 2000), which is estimated to translate into 8,000-9,000 word families based on British National Corpus (Nation, 2006). As for how to build up a large number of words in a learner’s mental dictionary, many studies have shown that textual input is indispensable to vocabulary growth (e.g. Krashen, 1989) and expanding vocabulary during reading comprehension is generally considered efficient (Rott et al., 2002).. Acquiring vocabulary through extensive. reading enables learners to get a richer sense of a word’s use and meaning in context, enhances pedagogical efficiency by combining two activities (i.e. vocabulary 1.

(12) acquisition and reading), and is suitable for individualized and learner-based learning (Huckin & Coady, 1999). However, textual input does not ensure comprehension and word learning.. First. of all, learners whose vocabulary size below 3,000 word families or 5,000 lexical items cannot comprehend a text to a minimum level (Laufer, 1997), and before learners reach a vocabulary level of 8,000-9,000 words, they still need support to read unsimplified texts (Nation, 2009).. In addition, the semantic features of some words. are so specific or complicated that it is impossible for readers to infer the precise meaning (Hulstijn, Hollander, & Greidanus, 1996).. Moreover, not all natural. contexts ensure successful inferences of word meaning (Frantzn, 2003; Hulstijn, 1992; Laufer, 1997), not to mention word learning.. Even if the context is favorable to. word meaning inference, learners may be misled by similar lexical items (Haynes, 1993; Laufer, 1997; Nation, 2001), view remembering word meaning as an unnecessary effort after the need of comprehension has been met (Hulstijn et al., 1996; Sokman, 1997), refuse to make a guess after failures in the past guessing experiences (Haynes, 1993), or simply not use the contextual clues (Frantzn, 2003; Rott et al., 2002).. Furthermore, although ‘the default hypothesis’ of vocabulary acquisition. claims that most L2 vocabulary is mainly acquired from reading input, Laufer challenged this hypothesis with the following arguments. First, learners may fail to. 2.

(13) notice an unfamiliar word in context. Second, even if they notice the word, they may not succeed in guessing its meaning from context. Third, even if successful guessing occurs, it does not ensure that learners can retain what they guess. Fourth, even if the above conditions of picking up a word are met, such learning processes require massive exposure, but in reality, it is difficult to provide a large amount of input in the foreign classroom learning setting (Laufer, 2003, 2005, 2006). Since text comprehension may not entail a high level of word processing that leads to long-term retention, textual enhancements have been explored to make new words salient (Rott & Williams, 2003). To maximize the benefit of learning from context, Hulstijn et al. (1996) emphasized the necessity of establishing form-meaning connection through external meaning references such as glosses. The history of glossing can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when there were smaller notes surrounding texts such as a scripture verse, and in the 16th century, the practice of explicating specific passage segments with marginal glosses first came into existence (Davis, 1989).. Nowadays, glosses usually appear “(1) in the text directly. after the glossed word, (2) in the margin on the same line as the glossed word, (3) at the bottom of the page containing the glossed word, and (4) at the end of the whole text” (Nation, 2001, p. 175) to supply context-relevant meaning for unfamiliar words (Nation, 2009).. Aside from providing definitions or synonyms of difficult or. 3.

(14) important words, glosses have other functions such as offering additional knowledge in specific content, skills and strategies to help text decoding (Ko, 2005). Glossing is one of the interventions frequently researched “to improve both the extent and speed of lexical acquisition” (Rott et al., 2002, p. 185). Many studies on glossing have focused on the language, the location, the frequency, and the medium of glosses (Bell & LeBlanc, 2000; Bowles, 2004; Holley & King, 1971; Jacobs et al., 1994; Ko, 2005; Laufer, 2000; Lomicka, 1998; Miyasako, 2002; Rott, 2007), or whether there are meaning choices of glosses (Hulstijn, 1992; Miyasako, 2002; Nagata, 1999; Rott, 2005; Rott & Williams, 2003; Rott et al., 2002; Watanabe, 1997). Research on computer-assisted reading has revealed that glosses can provide assistance for contextual vocabulary learning without negatively affecting the reading process (Read, 2004).. According to Nation (2001), glossing has four advantages.. First, learners can read difficult texts without simplification or adaptation. Second, the provision of accurate meanings prevents learners from making incorrect guesses, which should facilitate vocabulary learning and comprehension.. Third, glossing. does not interrupt the reading process greatly and is less time-consuming than dictionary use.. Fourth, learners may pay focused attention to glossed words, which. may encourage learning.. Two other advantages were mentioned in Ko (2005):. glosses can connect readers’ previous knowledge to the new knowledge to promote. 4.

(15) text comprehension and retention, and they encourage learner autonomy.. In addition,. compared with other implicit forms of input modification such as appositives, glosses also provide clearer connection between unknown words and their meaning and lessen the possibility that students may skip unfamiliar words and just read their explanations to meet the need of comprehension (Watanabe, 1997). Despite the aforementioned advantages, the long-term effect of glossing is not always observable (Jacobs et al., 1994; Miyasako, 2002; Rott et al., 2002).. Laufer. and Hulstijn (2001) also did not think glossing was a very effective way to facilitate vocabulary learning because it deterred readers from engaging in search or evaluation processes and only induced weak involvement load. Similarly, Nation (2001) agreed that a word form and its meaning had better not be presented simultaneously; otherwise, learners would make little effort to guess or recall the meaning. However, Nation also admitted that correct guessing did not happen all the time so showing form and meaning together in the first encounter of a word was still necessary to ensure successful retrieval in the subsequent encounters. From the above discussions, it seems clear that glossing can increase the possibility of learning correct word meaning in context but leaving words unglossed to have learners infer or retrieve word meaning may induce higher involvement load and more mental effort, thus contributing to better retention. Since both glossing and. 5.

(16) unglossing have pros and cons, making glossing preceded by inference or followed by retrieval may bring complementary benefits to vocabulary learning. However, Rott (2007) found that glossing words first and having learners retrieve the meanings later was not significantly more effective than glossing words all the time. Although Rott explained that “repeated processing of glosses might compensate for the quality of attentional resources spent during one word retrieval” (p. 189), her permission for the learners to refer back to the previous glossed word encounter during the retrieval might induce not so much search from memory as visual search for the previous gloss. In other words, Rott’s distinction between retrieval and simply a second glance of glosses might be blurred.. To eliminate the concern, the effectiveness of full glossing. (glossing a word in all of its occurrences) and gloss plus retrieval should be reexamined with no viewing of previous glosses during the retrieval allowed. As for research on inference followed by meaning assistance, the assistance has appeared in the form of a checklist (Mondria, 2003) but seldom occurs as a gloss along with the subsequent word encounter in the same text.. In addition, the effectiveness of. inference followed by glossing in word learning is never compared with that of gloss plus retrieval or full glossing.. Therefore, it is worth investigating these three. interventions together. Not only should effects of the three interventions on vocabulary learning be. 6.

(17) investigated but their effects on reading comprehension should deserve attention as well. The cognitive mechanisms involved in reading comprehension and lexical acquisition might be in conflict due to limited mental resources (Rott, 2007). While learners pay attention to text enhancements that facilitate word learning, their reading flow might be interrupted.. Likewise, if learners focus more on text comprehension,. they might skip the enhancements and exert less energy in word learning.. Therefore,. whether the three interventions result in a trade-off between learners’ reading comprehension and word learning should also be a focus in this study. Purpose of This Study There are two purposes in this study. The first and foremost aim is to see if the combination of glossing with inference or retrieval is a better way to facilitate vocabulary learning than full glossing.. Inference and retrieval, both of which. involve search and evaluation, are predicted to have higher involvement load than gloss viewing, but whether they are really more effective in facilitating word learning is not fully investigated.. Knowing which treatment is more effective can shed light. on how the connection between form and meaning can be better established. Second, while looking for a good way to establish the connection between form and meaning, the study also looks into whether there is a trade-off between word learning resulting from the interventions and reading comprehension.. 7. In SLA research, there has been.

(18) no definite conclusion regarding how word learning is related to text comprehension and whether word interventions affect text comprehension (Rott, 2007).. Therefore,. the results of learners’ reading comprehension performance should be taken into consideration in the evaluation of the interventions. Research Questions There are six research questions proposed in this study: 1. Which lexical intervention yields better word gain?. Glossing preceded by. inference, glossing followed by retrieval, or full glossing? 2. How do learners make use of glosses in each gloss encounter under different lexical interventions? 3. What is the effect of the lexical interventions on text comprehension? 4. Is there a relationship between word gain and reading comprehension? 5. Do learners prefer glossing preceded by inference, glossing followed by retrieval, or full glossing? 6. Among glossing preceded by inference, glossing followed by retrieval, and full glossing, which one do learners perceive to be the most useful in vocabulary learning and reading comprehension? Significance of This Study The significance of the study is threefold.. 8. First, the findings of this study are of.

(19) theoretical value, particularly in probing a more favorable way to establish form-meaning connection. Second, the implications of the findings can be practical in language teaching and learning. They help teachers and learners know whether resorting to meaning assistance all the time in the initial word encounters is more beneficial than having inference or retrieval once in a while. Third, exploring effects of combining glossing with inference or retrieval on both vocabulary learning and reading comprehension can provide us with a balanced evaluation of such text enhancements to see if they work effectively for vocabulary learning only, reading comprehension only, or both. Definition of Terms Glossing preceded by inference: It refers to a treatment in which learners infer the meaning of a word first and then receive its gloss.. In this study, the treatment is. realized in the form of the inference-gloss-gloss (IGG) condition.. In this condition,. participants are required to infer the meaning in the first word encounter but later they are provided with glosses in the following two word encounters. Glossing followed by retrieval: It refers to a treatment in which learners receive the gloss of a word first and then retrieve its meaning.. In this study, the treatment is. realized in the form of the gloss-retrieval-gloss (GRG) condition.. In this condition,. participants are provided with glosses in the first and the last word encounters and in. 9.

(20) the second word encounter, they are required to retrieve the meaning. Full glossing: It refers to a treatment in which learners receive the gloss assistance for a word whenever it occurs.. 10.

(21) CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter reviews theoretical support for the design of the lexical interventions employed in this study. This section will first introduce glossing, a technique that can enhance vocabulary learning from reading.. Then, there is a. review of involvement load hypothesis to point out the weakness of glossing in triggering search and evaluation processes, which paves the way for the subsequent discussions of lexical inferencing and retrieval.. Based on the review, six hypotheses. corresponding to the research questions are posed at the end of this chapter. Glossing Glosses explicitly direct learners’ attention to lexical items (Schmitt, 2008) and help them to notice more target vocabulary (Bowles, 2004; Hulstijn, 2001; Miyasako, 2002; Rott, 2005; Yanguas, 2009), “supporting the notion of ‘consciousness-raising’ and ‘input enhancement’” (Nagata, 1999, p. 469).. In an effort to induce learners to. notice words, it does not matter whether glosses are presented electronically or in the traditional paper-and-pen format (Bowles, 2004), combined with pictures, displayed in the form of texts or pictures alone (Yanguas, 2009). Although noticing is essential in learning language (deBot, Lowie, & Verspoor, 2005), it cannot be taken for granted that a new word will always come to learners’ notice (Laufer, 2003, 2005, 2006). 11. In.

(22) fact, some kind of Focus on Form such as attention to glosses has been found to be superior to comprehension-based learning (Laufer, 2006).. If the learners read. without any meaning support, they often ignored the unknown words or inferred their meanings incorrectly, which led to the limited reoccurrence effect, but if the form-meaning connection was established through external meaning references, reappearance of a word would reinforce the connection in the reader’s mental lexicon (Hulstijn et al., 1996). Therefore, compared with the no gloss condition, learners are more likely to acquire and retain more words from glossed reading (Abraham, 2008; Bowles, 2004; Hulstijn et al., 1996; Watanabe, 1997; Yanguas, 2009). What makes glossing effective in vocabulary learning can lie in its more accurate provision of word meaning than guessing and its deliberate, intentional element that involves thoughtful processing (Nation, 2009).. Glossing was found to be as. effective as text elaboration (O’Donnell, 2009), but Kim (2006) found that explicit lexical elaboration devices were found to enhance vocabulary learning more than implicit ones, which suggests that using a more explicit lexical support device such as glossing is very likely to facilitate vocabulary learning better than employing less explicit devices such as lexical elaboration.. In fact, Watanabe (1997) showed that. the group provided with marginal glosses significantly recalled more word meaning than the group with implicit lexical elaboration in the form of appositions on both. 12.

(23) short-term and long-term bases.. It is probably because elaboration may be so. confusing that learners are likely to feel disoriented in the redundant information, and without clear signals present in the explanation, learner at elementary levels may mistake the intended elaborations for new information (Lynch, 1996).. In avoidance. of such confusion, using glosses as lexical support, especially for those not proficient enough to recognize lexical elaboration, is more advisable. Holley and King (1971) also explained the value of glosses from two perspectives: prompting in paired-associate learning and rehearsal in verbal learning. In paired-associate studies with prompting, individuals are given a stimulus immediately followed by a correct response so that they can repeat the response without making any error.. Likewise, if the gloss of a new word is provided in. reading, learners will avoid making wrong meaning guesses and thus learn vocabulary more efficiently.. In verbal learning, rehearsal, either the subvocal (covert) or vocal. (overt) repetitions of a target item, is considered highly facilitative to learning, which suggests that the more times a word is looked up in its gloss, the better it will be retained.. Based on the two perspectives, Holley and King assumed that placing. glosses at a position that was neither too far from target words nor too close to them (i.e. in the margin) was very likely to facilitate word retention because learners could not only have timely access to the prompt but engage in some brief rehearsal as well.. 13.

(24) Nation (2009) also argued for the effectiveness of marginal glosses over other placements of glosses and Jacobs, Dufon and Fong’s (1994) survey showed that 94% of their participants preferred glosses placed in the margin, with only 6% preferring glosses at the bottom of the page or at the end of the passage. However, empirical studies did not find any significant advantage of placing glosses in the margin on vocabulary learning.. For example, Holley and King themselves did not find that the. location of glosses made any significant difference in word learning probably due to lack of rigid time control, the use of the simple reading material, the learners’ easy access to meanings and no expectation from the students to learn glossed words.. In. Cheng and Good (2009), marginal glosses even consistently yielded worse vocabulary gain than in-text glosses or glosses with examples on another separate page across immediate, one-week and 2-week delayed posttests. Since glossing may increase verbal rehearsal, it has a potential to enhance word learning in fewer exposures. When glosses are provided, multiple readings can be triggered in a single word exposure (Rott, 2007). For example, a word glossed in the margin is very likely to be read three times by students: see it in the passage for the first time, go to the gloss to understand its meaning for the second time, and move back to the passage to check how the meaning fits the context for the third time (Watanabe, 1997). Such behavior of going back and forth between target words and. 14.

(25) glosses can stimulate learners “to perform lexical processing, which may contribute to the retention of the words” (Nagata, 1999, pp. 469-470). That may partially explain the reason why glossing could increase the probability of one-exposure incidental learning from 3% to 21% (Chun & Plass, 1996).. Rott (2007) also reported that when. words were glossed once initially, reading one-exposure words could be as effective as reading those occurring four times in acquiring and retaining word knowledge across 4 to 6 weeks. Therefore, although learners need to encounter a word at least six times to acquire it incidentally from unglossed texts (Ghadirian, 2002; Huang, 2007; Liu, 2002; Nation, 2001; Rott, 1999), the estimate of minimal exposure frequency is likely to be revised under the glossing condition. Many studies have observed learners’ positive attitudes toward glossing. Jacobs et al. (1994) showed that 98.7% of their participants preferred the presence to the absence of glosses, and on average, Jacobs’s (1994) participants rated 5.47 out of 6 points on the usefulness of glossing.. Cheng and Good’s (2009) survey also. showed that 75% of their subjects experiencing the glossing treatments held a positive view of glosses in facilitating text comprehension and vocabulary learning. Likewise, in Bell and LeBlanc’s (2000) exit survey, all of the participants in the L1 gloss group and 74.2% of the L2 gloss group responded that glossing helped their text comprehension, and 80.5% of all the participants in both groups desired more. 15.

(26) vocabulary help for the unglossed words.. Ko (2005) showed that 94% of her. participants preferred to read glossed materials as well.. In explanation of why. glossing was favored, her participants expressed that glosses facilitated content understanding, reduced long interruptions from dictionary consultation, supplied the most appropriate contextual definitions, promoted incidental vocabulary learning, and prevented wrong guesses. Glosses can aid second language reading by facilitating bottom-up processing to save more of readers’ mental resources for top-down processing (Gettys et al., 2001). As Ko’s (2005) think-aloud data showed, glosses apparently made the students’ reading processes smoother and faster. While the no-gloss group was observed to use more low-level strategies to deal with unknown words and to monitor their uncertain comprehension more frequently, the gloss groups employed more high-level reading strategies such as making inferences.. When there are comprehension. breakdowns, referring to glosses can also be viewed as a repair strategy (Jacobs, 1994).. In Rott (2007), there was a general tendency that the more times words were. glossed in their occurrences, the better the learners comprehended the main ideas, which suggested that “repeated provision of meaning for the same word triggered not only the comprehension of the target word but also the entire proposition” (p. 191). Although consulting dictionaries is another way to facilitate word encoding processes,. 16.

(27) vocabulary assistance, provided either before reading or during reading, can reduce the extraneous cognitive load (i.e. cognitive load generated from unnecessary characteristics of the learning context for content learning) resulting from dictionary use (Alessi & Dwyer, 2008). Aside from bottom-up processing, glossing may facilitate the learner-text interaction. According to Stewart and Cross (1991), glosses can foster an interaction between the text and the reader’s active stance in reading. Such active involvement promotes the monitoring of meaning construction.. When text and gloss are. processed concurrently, there will be greater text elaboration that leads to deeper memory because the interaction with glosses may make information held long in working memory and help readers incorporate prior learning into new knowledge generated from the text. From a top-down perspective, looking at glosses may switch learners’ attention to individual words, disrupt reading flow, and hinder the mental creation of an overall text representation (Jacobs, 1994).. Lomicka’s (1998) qualitative data also indicated. that glosses were used mainly to achieve comprehension at a minimal level such as translation and paraphrasing, and Johnson (1982) indicated that exposure to vocabulary assistance contributed to reading comprehension less than prior cultural knowledge.. However, compared with other form-focus tasks, glossing is less. 17.

(28) intrusive in reading comprehension.. In Keating (2008), those who read a text with. target words bolded and glossed in L1 in the margin answered 83% of five true/false comprehension questions correctly on average, but another group of learners only got 73% correct on the same comprehension test after reading the same text except that the target words were blanked and required to be filled in the text based on the L2 definitions, examples, and L1 gloss provided on a separate page.. Although the. comprehension scores of the two groups did not differ significantly, the researcher suggested that the learners’ additional mental effort exerted on the fill-in task might have interfered with comprehension. Some empirical studies have shown that glossing significantly improves comprehension more than reading without glossing.. In Davis (1989), 71 university. undergraduates read an L2 story following one of the three conditions: (1) simply read-write-read with no aid, (2) pre-read questions, comments and word definitions, and then read the text, and (3) read the text with questions and word definitions glossed in the margin.. After the treatment, all of the participants were required to. recall the text in L1. The results showed that the students in the glosses provided during and before reading conditions significantly recalled more pausal units (i.e. linguistic units between natural pauses for breath catching, emphasis or meaning enhancement, cited from Bell and LeBlanc (2000)) than those in the no aid condition.. 18.

(29) Jacobs (1994) found that glossing facilitated the students’ reading comprehension. In his study, 116 students learning Spanish as a second language split into two groups, the gloss group and the no gloss group, and read a toy text in which there were target words relevant to the main idea of the text.. The results not only showed that. glossing helped the students significantly recall approximately 30% more idea units but also demonstrated that overall, the gloss group spent less time reading the text than the no gloss group. Watanabe (1997) reported that the learners reading the glossed text answered open-ended comprehension questions significantly better than those reading the original text. Bowles’s (2004) gloss groups comprehended a text significantly better than the control group with no access to glosses. Her think-aloud protocol data showed the participants used glosses mainly to understand the text, not to learn vocabulary.. Abraham’s (2008) meta-analysis indicated that L2 learners who. had access to computer-mediated text glosses consistently scored higher on reading comprehension than those who did not. Yanguas’s (2009) three gloss groups were significantly better than the no gloss group on the performance of a multiple-choice comprehension test. Other studies have not seen any significant effect of glossing on comprehension. Stewart and Cross (1991) and Johnson (1982) found that whether learners read a text with or without glosses did not make any significant difference in reading. 19.

(30) comprehension.. Joyce (1997) pointed out that the reason why glossing did not. facilitate reading comprehension in Johnson’s study was that the text was contrived by the researcher and thus could have been tailor-made to match the participants’ vocabulary level, which might make glosses unnecessary in aiding comprehension. Jacobs et al. (1994) and Joyce (1997) found that learners with glosses provided generally recalled more idea units in L1 than those without but their difference did not reach a significant level.. Davis and Lyman-Hager (1997) also reported a weak. correlation between the use frequency of glosses and the recall protocol and a negative correlation between the use frequency of glosses and the multiple-choice comprehension test. They postulated that there was a ceiling on the effectiveness of glossing when the passage was so difficult that the students’ limited comprehension capacities were overloaded by the syntactic complexity of some sentence segments and too many unfamiliar cultural reference and vocabulary items (660 glossed words in a 1,754-word passage).. In addition, “inaccurate intratextual perception of the. passage apparently had a more powerful effect upon these subjects’ recalls than did the word definitions that they had consulted in the gloss” (pp. 65-66), which “provides further evidentiary support for the psychological necessity of representing events in memory in a manner that conforms with one’s view of reality, in combination with the interpretation of a text one is reading” (p.67).. 20. Miyasako (2002) found that whether.

(31) the participants read a text with glosses or not, they answered comprehension questions almost equally well. The researcher suspected that the comprehension questions might not be well-designed so the learners could answer the questions without understanding the glossed words and that glossing might interrupt reading process.. Cheng and Good’s (2009) gloss groups also did not show significant. superiority over the no-gloss group in reading comprehension probably because glosses directed the learners to pay more attention to word meaning processing than to text comprehension and detail memorization or because the number of comprehension questions was too small to make any effective discrimination between subjects. Although no obvious positive effects of glossing on reading comprehension are observed in those studies, glossing is not found to severely interfere with text comprehension, either. There may be another reason to explain why the above studies did not show any obvious effect of glossing on reading comprehension: glossing will not influence reading comprehension significantly unless the unknown word text coverage is high enough.. In Johnson’s own opinion, the percentage of unknown words (around 19%). in the text might not be high enough to affect her advanced students’ comprehension and her students might be able to make use of text redundancy to figure out unfamiliar words and to construct a text based on their background knowledge. Although it is. 21.

(32) not known what percentage of unknown words is enough to make glossing effective, Holley and King (1971) seemed to support that if the density of new words does not reach a certain level, the performance of learners’ reading comprehension will be similar regardless of how many new words are glossed.. In their study, there was no. significant difference in the multiple choice comprehension test scores between the learners reading two versions of a text, with each version designed with the coverage of the glossed words only at 3.33% or 6.67%, respectively.. Consistent with. Johnson’s explanation, Miyasako (2002) thought that the low percentage of unknown words (only 5%) in the experimental text might also make glossing ineffective in enhancing the learners’ comprehension. According to Miyasako, the result might confirm Laufer’s (1997) prediction that knowing 95% of the words in a text without the assistance of glosses enabled learners to read to a satisfactory degree but did not sufficiently exhibit the effectiveness of glossing in reading comprehension. However, as Davis and Lyman-Hager (1997) reported that more than 37% of new words glossed in a text were too overwhelming for learners, an optimal range of glossing percentage that can facilitate learners’ comprehension may fall between 19% and 37% in a text. In addition, language proficiency and text difficulty may be two interrelated factors that need to be considered in judging the effect of glossing on reading. 22.

(33) comprehension. To begin with, the conflicting results between the nonsignificant effect of glossing observed among the advanced learners in Johnson (1982) and the significant glossing effect reported among the intermediate learners in Alessi and Dwyer (2008) on reading comprehension may also lie in the different proficiency levels of the participants. Ko (2005) also noticed that even when glosses were provided, the participants still sometimes misinterpreted sentences as a result of their poor syntactic knowledge or general reading ability. Moreover, Jacobs et al. (1994) found that there was a stronger association between text recall and glossing for the higher proficiency learners, which suggested that if a text was too difficult, a massive amount of glossing was needed but that if it was easy, glossing became superfluous. Jacobs et al.’s suggestion makes it clear that the effect of glossing is determined by whether there is an appropriate match between learners’ proficiency level and text difficulty. When text difficulty is below learners’ proficiency level, glosses are of little help.. For example, Davis and Lyman-Hager’s (1997) multiple regression. analyses indicated a negative correlation between the use frequency of glossing and the course grade, which meant that those whose general language ability was high enough to read the passage might consider the reliance on glosses less necessary than the low proficiency learners.. In Taylor’s (2006) comments on Ko’s (2005) study, he. stated that if texts were fairly simple, learners might have no need to consult glosses.. 23.

(34) However, when texts are far too difficult for learners, whether glosses are provided or not does not make too much difference, either.. Davis and Lyman-Hager (1997). explained that having the learners read a text which was too difficult for them could be one of the reasons why the effect of glosses on their reading performance was rather limited in their study. As Rott et al. (2002) also added in their notes, when a large proportion of the text was unintelligible to readers, glosses could hardly facilitate text comprehension or lexical acquisition. Moreover, Abraham’s (2008) meta-analysis revealed that glosses did not work effectively with beginners on comprehension measures probably because learners at an elementary level might need more than lexical glosses to monitor and facilitate their reading of authentic L2 texts. Therefore, the above studies seem to suggest that instructors should take learners’ proficiency level and text difficulty into consideration when they implement glossing in their teaching reading. Proficiency levels may influence the effectiveness of glossing in vocabulary learning as well. Abraham (2008) found that glossing had a robust positive effect on intermediate learners but was the least effective for low proficiency learners. According to Abraham, Intermediate learners may possess deeper lexical knowledge allowing them to connect vocabulary encountered in the glosses more easily to a pre-existing. 24.

(35) semantic system and network of L2 vocabulary than beginners who are still developing their vocabulary base. That is, beginning L2 learners may need to achieve a threshold level of vocabulary knowledge before being able to retain words presented in glosses. (pp. 210-211) For high-proficiency learners, the effect of glossing may not be obvious, either.. In. Johnson (1982), the reason why the learners with or without glosses performed equally well on vocabulary tests may be that their proficiency level was high enough to infer the word meaning regardless of the provision of vocabulary assistance. Stewart and Cross (1990) also explained that high proficiency learners’ performance might be suppressed by test ceiling effects so they “might have difficulty improving their already high test scores even with the aid of the marginal gloss” (p. 10).. In. addition, Cheng and Good (2009) found that if the text difficulty was beyond the learners’ proficiency level, the significant superiority of gloss groups over the control group disappeared. Therefore, learners’ proficiency level should not be neglected in determining the effectiveness of glossing. Since it is generally accepted that glossing enhances vocabulary learning more than no glossing, the question “has shifted from whether or not glosses are useful for incidental vocabulary learning to which gloss type is most effective” (Yoshii, 2006, p. 85). According to Roby (1999), taxonomy of glosses covers six main aspects. The. 25.

(36) first aspect focuses on gloss authorship. Glosses can be generated by professionals such as instructors and materials developers or by learners themselves.. In the. Middle Ages, students produced glosses as they struggled with a Latin text. As the concepts of learner autonomy and cooperative learning are promoted, learners should be encouraged to gloss for their own benefit. With computer programs containing ‘notebook’ features available, learners can easily compile their own word list and share their notes with peers to co-construct comprehension now. Although Taylor (2006) mentioned that learners might not perceive a need to consult glosses selected by teachers, Parry’s (1991) longitudinal studies showed that when the learners recorded and glossed difficult vocabulary on their own, they might skate over unfamiliar words and their glosses were not always correct. The second aspect deals with gloss presentation.. Glosses presented prior to a reading passage are called. priming glossaries, which can serve as advance organizers. Those consulted during reading are termed prompting glossaries. Priming glossaries can provide general or specific definitions but prompting glossaries are usually limited to definitions that fit a particular context. The third aspect lists gloss functions. Glosses can make up for the deficiency in a reader’s procedural or declarative knowledge.. Under the category. of procedural glosses are metacognitive glosses, highlighting glosses and clarifying glosses. Metacognitive glosses promote readers’ comprehension monitoring, build a. 26.

(37) bridge between prior knowledge and new learning, and supply text elaboration. Highlighting glosses put key points under the spotlight. Clarifying glosses substitute reader-activated concrete referents for abstract text content. Under the category of declarative glosses are encyclopedic glosses and linguistic glosses.. Linguistic. glosses cover syntactic and lexical glosses, the latter of which can give signification (dictionary definition) or value (meaning that is specific to a particular context) to an item. The fourth aspect elaborates on types of gloss focus. Gloss focus can be textual or extratextual. Textual glosses can bring readers back to the text, whereas extratextual glosses add new information to it. The fifth aspect is on gloss language. The language of glosses can be learners’ L1, L2 or L3.. Although L3 glosses are not. commonly used, it is possible to see them in L2 textbook materials imported from countries where learners’ L3 is the native language.. Finally, glosses can be. categorized in terms of their form. Glosses can be verbal, visual or audio. Visual glosses can be in the form of images, icons (pictures representing a special referential meaning in a text such as referring to hot tips with images of lit matches in the margin in Macintosh Bible), or videos with/without sound. Glosses in the form of sound only are categorized as audio. In this section, glossing is discussed in the aspects of cognitive benefits, learners’ preference, bottom-up and top-down processing, text coverage, text difficulty and. 27.

(38) language proficiency, and taxonomy.. In the following sections, detailed empirical. comparisons within Roby’s (1999) categories of gloss presentation, gloss focus, gloss language, and gloss form, and other categories not mentioned by him are reported. Gloss Presentation Whether gloss is presented within or separated from text has received research attention. As Spada and Lightbown (2008) have pointed out, there is a distinction between isolated and integrated form-focus instruction (FFI).. In isolated FFI,. learners focus on language forms separately from communicative or content-based activities, while in integrated FFI, their focus occurs within communicative or content-based activities. The two types of instruction have their own theoretical foundation. The isolated FFI is believed to build a solid mental anchor for learners to rely on during communicative exercises and to solve the problem that learners, especially beginners, have difficulty processing form and meaning simultaneously due to limited processing capacity. Prince (1996) also contended that it was necessary to isolate the word from the context so that learners could pay attention to the orthographic and phonological forms of a word and associate the new word with the known consciously.. In addition, viewing target vocabulary separately before reading. is conducive to acquisition because the saliency of the lexis is increased and the new words can be encountered repeatedly in both decontextualized and contextualized. 28.

(39) settings (Hunt & Beglar, 2005). Although Hunt and Beglar argued that the pace of lexical acquisition can be accelerated from explicitly studying decontextualized lexis on a temporary basis, they emphasized that meeting words in context was still the primary focus of instruction and the reason for decontextualized learning.. The. integrated FFI has been based on the argument that such instruction helps learners notice form in the input and on transfer appropriate processing (TAP), the concept of which is that “learners retrieve knowledge best if the processes for retrieval are similar to those that were used in the learning condition” (Spada & Lightbown, 2008, p. 190). Studies have found that isolated glossing and integrated glossing generally lead to a similar amount of vocabulary acquisition. Johnson (1982) recruited advanced learners studying at a university ESL center and asked them to read a text with one of the four conditions: no glosses, prereading glosses, during-reading glosses, and prereading-plus-during-reading glosses.. After reading the passage, the students. needed to recall the text and to recognize whether sentences paraphrased from the passage with the target words embedded were true or not, which could be regarded as a measurement of immediate word recognition. Two weeks later, they were required to fill in the target words in a cloze test on the original text as a measurement of long-term word production.. In her results, the four treatment groups demonstrated. 29.

(40) no significant differences in the immediate sentence recognition and the 2-week delayed cloze test performance.. Likewise, in Cheng and Good (2009), the word gain. from viewing L1 glosses plus L2 examples before reading was almost commensurate with that from viewing in-text or marginal L1 glosses. Following Spada and Lightbown’s (2008) distinction, File and Adams (2010) studied 20 ESL learners reading two articles in two form-focused conditions.. In one. condition, the students learned the word meaning in isolation before reading one of the articles.. In the other condition, they received the word meaning during reading. the other article.. In each article, there were 1,250 to 1,300 running words in total. with 18 target words embedded once and bolded. Among the 18 target words, 6 were untreated for incidental learning and 12 were explicitly taught either before or during reading.. Each explicitly taught word was pronounced by one of the. researchers; its definition, example sentence, and two synonyms were shown on an overhead transparency and explained by the researcher orally.. The time for each. treatment was equal and in each treatment, one researcher read the text aloud for the learners to follow along and made a two-to-three-sentence summary orally without using the target words at the end of each paragraph reading. Eighteen days before the treatments, the VKS measuring the 36 target words and 12 nonsense distracters was administered as a pretest.. Immediately after each reading, the learners took a. 30.

(41) multiple-choice comprehension test and completed the VKS as a posttest. Sixteen days after finishing the second treatment, they did the VKS as a delayed posttest. From their VKS scores, both types of form-focused conditions were statistically superior to incidental exposure alone and yielded similar learning and retention rates, though isolated instruction tended to result in higher learning and retention rates among such a small sample size. The tendency in favor of isolated vocabulary instruction might be due to a lower cognitive load involved in such instruction in which learners only focused on the word instruction without worrying about other aspects such as fitting the taught word in the text and figuring out how the word was related to the overall text message in the integrated instruction.. The learners’. posttreatment survey also suggested that the learners might view the isolated instruction as vocabulary learning but the integrated instruction merely as an aid of comprehension, which had limited the effect on word learning.. In terms of meeting. frequency, the isolated instruction enabled the learners to have two meetings with the target words, one in the instruction and the other in the reading, whereas the learners only had one visual meeting with the target words in the integrated instruction. Following the logic of meeting frequency, postreading instruction was suggested to be worth exploring in increasing vocabulary learning. File and Adams were not the first ones to notice the potential benefit of. 31.

(42) postreading instruction.. Laufer (2006) had demonstrated that memorizing a word. list intentionally after reading in an incidental condition enhanced vocabulary learning. One hundred and fifty eight Hebrew and Arabic high-school learners of English in Israel participated in a two-phase study and were evenly divided into two groups.. In. the first incidental learning phase, one group studied a word list of 12 target words and did vocabulary exercises in the form of meaning selection and gap filling in a Focus on FormS (FonFs) condition, while the other group read a 165-word text containing five target words with access to a bilingualized dictionary as a reference and answered five comprehension questions requiring understanding of the five target words in the Focus on Form (FonF) condition. When the treatment was over, both groups took an unexpected word meaning recall test of the 12 target words. After finishing the first phase, all of the participants were asked to memorize a word list of the 12 target words for an upcoming test in the second intentional learning phase. Following the memorization stage, a form-recall test and a meaning-recall test were administered immediately and 2 weeks later.. The results showed that after the. second phase of intentional memorization, both groups showed increase between the two meaning-recall tests, with the increase more evident in the FonF group. Although the FonF group was significantly inferior to the FonFs group on the first meaning recall test, the former slightly outperformed the latter on the second meaning. 32.

(43) recall test after the memorization stage. The findings suggest that it is advisable to combine integrated (the first phase of the FonF condition) and isolated (the second phase of intentional memorization) form-focused instruction to facilitate vocabulary learning. In Sonbul and Schmitt (2010), postreading instruction was also found to be more effective than reading only in vocabulary learning.. Forty Arabic female ESP. students read a 700-word text with 20 low-frequency or medical target words occurring only once.. Half of the words were encountered in the reading-only. condition and the other half in the reading-plus condition. The treatment began with a silent reading section lasting for 10 minutes followed by a comprehension assessment for general and specific questions.. Then, words under the reading-only. condition were left untreated, whereas each target word under the reading-plus condition was explained with two meanings written on the board and orally repeated once by the teacher. One week before the treatment, the students took a translation test on the 20 target items plus 40 high-frequency lexical distracters as a pretest. Immediately and one week after the treatment, three tests were administered. The first test measured form recall in which the students completed a target word with its first three letters shown in a definitional sentence.. The second test measured. meaning recall in the form of an L2-L1 word translation test.. 33. The third test.

(44) measured meaning recognition by asking the learners to choose a correct L2 definition for the target word from five options: a correct answer, three distracters and an option of “I don’t know.”. Compared with the reading-only condition, the reading-plus. condition yielded higher scores by 8% on the form recall test, 11% on the meaning recall test and 31% on the meaning recognition test measured immediately.. One. week later, the scores of the reading-plus condition were still higher by 7% on the form recall test, 12% on the meaning recall test and 15% on the meaning recognition test.. The findings suggested that explicit vocabulary instruction after incidental. learning from reading was worth implementing to help EFL learners expand their vocabulary size. In reading research, there is a tendency that integrated glossing facilitates comprehension better than isolated glossing.. In Johnson (1982), the passage was. constructed with a familiar section and an unfamiliar section about the Halloween celebration and the recall data were analyzed into lexical propositions (i.e. separate idea units in the form of clauses, phrases or single words) and relational propositions (i.e. propositional links expressing ideas of time, place, cause, etc.), and compared with the propositional analysis of the reading passage. The results showed that reading with vocabulary aid, either in the form of a preview of word definitions, word glosses provided in progress or both, did not contribute to better overall reading. 34.

(45) comprehension than the no glossing treatment significantly. However, among the three glossing treatments, the prereading treatment resulted in significantly better recall in the familiar section than the prereading-plus-during-reading treatment, and the during-reading treatment generated the best recall in the unfamiliar section at a nonsignificant level. The combined treatment, according to Johnson, might put too much emphasis on words and lead the students to read word by word without fully reaching the goal of reading for the general comprehension. Similarly, Davis (1989) found the pausal unit number recalled in the gloss during reading condition was nonsignificantly higher than that in the pre-reading condition. The advantage of during-reading assistance over prereading assistance might lie in the fact that the former could come in handy just in time when there was a need while the latter might not do so because what was presented before reading might be forgotten when a gap was noticed during reading (Alessi & Dwyer, 2008).. File and Adams’s (2010). participant expressed similar positive comments on during-reading assistance and negative feelings about prereading assistance in reading comprehension by saying that When you told us the word’s meaning during reading, it was easy for me to understand and follow your (reading) speed.. When you gave us the word’s. meaning first, it was difficult for me to remember. And when you started to read the article, everytime I saw the new words, I would stop to think about it. 35.

(46) and then couldn’t follow your speed. (p. 241) Alessi and Dwyer also mentioned that although prereading activities were supported by schema theory, it was questionable to regard the pre-reading vocabulary introduction as the reader’s prior knowledge.. The pre-reading vocabulary. introduction might only provide a superficial hook into the reader’s knowledge but prior knowledge was generally considered to be well-learned and well-integrated information beyond the knowledge of vocabulary.. In their study on US university. undergraduates taking intermediate Spanish, the during-reading hypertext glossing groups not only spent slightly less time reading but produced significantly more idea units on a five-item open-ended comprehension and recall test than the no glossing group, while the prereading group and the prereading plus during reading hypertext group did not. Although the prereading group spent significantly less time reading the article than the during-reading hypertext and the no glossing groups, the prereading activity, which required the students to glance over a list of 40 critical lexical items first and then to keep supplying L1 meaning for a pop-up target word until they entered a correct answer, might be so effortful that it might have just made the students weary and eager to finish the reading as soon as possible.. In fact, the. total time the prereading group spent doing the prereading activity and reading the article was significantly longer than the other groups, even including the prereading. 36.

(47) plus during reading hypertext group.. Another noteworthy result was that the. combination of prereading and during-reading vocabulary assistance not only led to slightly poorer reading performance than the during-reading assistance alone but also significantly decreased the learners’ preference for the provision of vocabulary assistance.. The researchers explained that the cognitive load of the combined. assistance might be so heavy that the students’ cognitive processing available for reading comprehension was distracted. To sum up, presenting meaning assistance during or separately from reading did not make too much difference in learning single-exposure words in reading, but combining incidental learning with postreading vocabulary instruction enhances word learning greatly. However, if the instructional goal is to facilitate comprehension, it is not advisable to design both prereading and during-reading glossing materials for learners.. If the text is familiar or easy to learners, prereading glossing may be more. effective, but if the text is unfamiliar or difficult to learners, during-reading glossing may work better. Gloss Focus Gloss focus may influence reading comprehension.. As Lomicka (1998). indicated, the achievement of comprehension does not solely depend on surface linguistic processes or the understanding of propositional meaning; it also involves the. 37.

(48) integration of background and other world knowledge.. Her analyses of the. participants’ think-aloud protocols suggested that the more information such as intratextual questions and cultural references provided in glosses the students could have access to, the more causal inferences and the deeper level of text comprehension they could generate. Gloss Language It has been expected that L1 glosses will facilitate vocabulary learning more than L2 glosses before learners reach a certain level.. It is because L2 words are claimed. to be mediated through L1 translation until learners’ L2 proficiency increases to a level where L2 can be directly linked with concepts without L1 mediation (Hulstijn, 2001; Yoshii, 2006). As L2 proficiency develops, learners’ reliance on L1 to access relevant schema and to confirm meaning will diminish (Grace, 1998).. Following. these arguments, Miyasako (2002) pointed out that low-proficiency learners benefited more from L1 glosses while high-proficiency learners did so from L2 glosses.. In. Miyasako’s study, L2 glosses were significantly more effective than L1 glosses for the students whose English proficiency were around the pre-intermediate or intermediate level, and the effectiveness of L2 glosses seemed to decrease or even surpassed by L1 glosses for the lower-proficiency learners. However, other studies did not show that the language type of glossing made any. 38.

(49) significant difference in vocabulary learning.. In Jacobs et al. (1994), Chen (2002). and Yoshii (2006), there was no significant difference in vocabulary learning between an L1 gloss group and an L2 gloss group. Since it may not matter whether the target or native language is used in glossing, Schmitt (2008) argued that providing less-proficient learners with L1 glosses did no harm because using the L1 to facilitate the form-meaning linkage (by providing an easy access to meaning) may allow more cognitive resources to be focused on form (Barcroft, 2002).. Then, once the link is established, there will be more. resources freed up to allot to the learning of the more contextualized types of word knowledge. Given the cognitive constraints inherent in learning an L2, it is unlikely that learners will absorb much contextualized knowledge at the beginning stages anyway, which suggests there is little disadvantage to using the L1 to establish initial meaning. (p. 337) Despite no discovery of any significant difference in the language type, Chen (2002) found that college freshmen having access to L1 glosses significantly outperformed the no gloss group in vocabulary learning but those having access to L2 glosses did not. Yoshii (2006) also reported significantly lower forgetting rate of the L1 text-only gloss group than the L2 gloss groups with or without picture aids in word recognition, so it was likely that if L1 glosses were used more frequently and over a. 39.

(50) longer time span, they might become superior to L2 glosses and even as effective as text-plus picture glosses in word learning. There is no agreement on the relationship between glossing language and reading comprehension, either.. According to Nation (2009), among all types of glossing, the. L1 superscript gloss was the least intrusive on reading because it took up minimal word processing.. However, Bell and LeBlanc (2000) reported that a twist. comprehension question was answered far better by the L2 gloss group (47.6% correct) than the L1 gloss group (17.7% correct). Chen (2002) also found that the L2 gloss group significantly but the L1 gloss group only nonsignificantly outperformed the no gloss group in reading comprehension, though the impact of L2 glosses should have been adjusted with time spent on the reading task.. Similarly, in Ko’s (2005). quantitative study on 94 intermediate or high-intermediate Korean university undergraduates, L2 glosses significantly but L1 glosses nonsignificantly promoted scores on a multiple-choice reading comprehension test over the no-gloss condition. Even though the above evidence suggests that which language is used in glossing may influence reading comprehension, studies found that whether the language of glosses was L1 or L2 did not constitute a significant factor in reading comprehension (Bell & LeBlanc, 2000; Chen, 2002; Jacobs et al., 1994; Ko, 2005). Although Nation (2002) also claimed that “The choice between L1 and L2 does not seem to be critical as long. 40.