The Effect of Glosses on Incidental Vocabulary Learning of Iranian EFL learners

Reading passages contain many new words. Looking up every word in the dictionary and finding the exact meaning can be a difficult job for learners and may hinder the process of reading. Providing glosses helps learners overcome this problem and also learners can have a better comprehension of the text. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of glosses on incidental vocabulary learning. To this end, 45 Iranian EFL learners were selected from 70 based on their performance on KET test. They were randomly divided into three groups of 15. Ten reading texts were selected and unfamiliar vocabularies were glossed in three ways: pictorial, textual and pictorial-textual glosses. Participants were required to read the texts under one of the three conditions. After the completion of ten sessions of treatment, participants were given a vocabulary post-test to measure vocabulary learning. The results of the study revealed that the group receiving the combination of pictorial and textual glosses outperformed the other two groups. The findings can be of great importance for language teachers and material developers.

کلیدواژه ها:

Incidental vocabulary learning ، Gloss ، Pictorial gloss ، Textual gloss ، Pictorial and textual gloss