Effect of Different Glosses on Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition through Reading for Junior High Students

一．选题依据：

Vocabulary is the essential element of language and plays a fundamental role in all language activities. The vocabulary size directly influences second/foreign language learners’ ability in using language. Second/foreign language researchers argue that extensive reading can facilitate incidental vocabulary acquisition and gloss,serving as a way to enhance input in reading, can significantly improve the efficacy of incidental vocabulary acquisition. In recent years, many scholars at home and abroad have conducted researches into glossing languages, glossing ways, and glossing position,including semantic aspect and phonological part of words.However, the research on effectiveness of glossing with English explanation combined with phonological is rarely conducted.Considering the importance of glosses in English learning, it is necessary to give a further study into the effect of glossing with English explanation plus phonological. Therefore, on the basis of the previous research results and relevant literature,this study, based on the theories of Noticing  Hypothesis, Depth of Processing Hypothesis, Information Processing Model, is designed to mainly address the three questions. 1) Does gloss with English with phonological has positive effects on  Chinese junior high students' incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading? 2) Which type of gloss is more effective on learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition in reading in the immediate vocabulary test? 3) Which type of gloss is more effective for retention of words in delayed vocabulary test?

二．研究现状：

Vocabulary plays a crucial role in second language learning. It is well believed  “without grammar  little can be conveyed, while without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed” (Wilkins, 1972). And how to facilitate vocabulary master arises growing attention and researches. According to the survey, recently a great deal of attention is paid to incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading  (Mason  &  Krashen.1997;  Dupuy  &  Krashen,  1993; Nagy,  Anderson&  Herman,  1985;  Laufer  &  Hulstijn,  2001;  Li,  1988;  Pulido,  2003;  Joe,  1998). The effectiveness of incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading has been firmly backed by many research results. 

However, learning words through incidental acquisition is imperfect and some inevitable limitations exist in learning words through inferring from the context in an incidental way. There is numerous evidence showing that acquiring vocabulary incidentally through reading can’t achieve as much as we expect (Knight, 1994; Paribakht & Wesche, 1997; Laufer, 2001) and is “not much better than random guessing in the tests” (Waring & Takaki, 2003: 131). The reasons can be concluded as follows: firstly, learners simply fail to notice the unfamiliar words while reading (Rottetal., 2002); secondly, learners are unable to guess the correct meaning of the new words  because of insufficient contextual clues. 

Based on this,researchers adopt gloss as an interfere means to facilitate vocabulary incidental acquisition researchers adopt gloss as an interfere means to facilitate reading comprehension and improve vocabulary learning.It has been widely proved that gloss has a positive effect on L2 vocabulary acquisition (Chun&  Plass,  1996;  Knight,  1994;  Paribakht  &  Wesche,  1997). 

In recent years, the researches relating to the effect of gloss on L2 language acquisition have shown new characteristics, shifting from whether gloss has a positive effect to what gloss can better promote L2 language acquisition. (Yoshi, 2006) 

Researchers at home and aboard mainly conduct the research concerning L1 and L2 glosses, single and multiple-choice glosses, task involvement load and so on. However, the phonological gloss indicator of predicting the recognition and reading ability in terms of L1 and L2, has been paid little attention to. Although Li Xiang, a graduate from HeNan Normal University made a research on the effect of phonological gloss on incidental vocabulary learning, she just compared Chinese meaning, phonological gloss and combination while English explanation was ignored. Therefore, in order to provide more ideas for English learners with effective vocabulary acquisition. This study, based on the previous research achievements and related literature review, intends to compare the different effect of various ways of gloss including Chinese gloss, English gloss, Chinese plus phonological gloss and English plus phonological gloss on the learning of the unknown words.