Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research background
Vocabulary acquisition is regarded as one of the most important aspects of secondlanguage (L2) acquisition. The importance of vocabulary has been recognized bymore and more researchers especially in recent decades. As Candlin (1988: 16) says,"The study of vocabulary is at the heart of language teaching in terms of organizationof syllabuses, the evaluation of learner performance and the provision of learningresources". Bowles (2004) asserts that without grammar very little can be conveyed,but without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. A large number of second languagereaders agree that the main obstacle to reading is their lack of vocabulary (Alessi &Dwyer, 2008). "Vocabulary is also the area that learners seem most conscious of ” *(Ellis，1985: 98)，thus many teachers and learners give vocabulary the top priority inforeign language teaching and learning.Nagy, Herman and Anderson (1985)，when dealing with school children learningwords of first language (LI) from context，put forward the concept of incidentalvocabulary acquisition, which is contrasted with explicit or intentional vocabulary ?learning. Intentional vocabulary learning means that learners acquire words throughpaying special attention to words in word-related activities or exercises, for example,memorizing word-lists, learning word-formation，while incidental vocabulary learningrefers to the process in which learners focus on understanding the meaning of thecontext rather than the unknown words themselves，and acquire vocabularyincidentally when doing other cognitive exercises，such as reading, listening andwriting. Just as Huckin and Coady (1999: 181) state, it is widely agreed that muchsecond language vocabulary learning occurs incidentally while the learner is engagedin extensive reading.
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1.2 Significance of this study
Tlieoretically, it is hoped that the present study can enrich researches on the —effects of glosses on incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. Acomprehensive literature survey done by the author has found, though there alreadyexist many researches examining the effects of different types of glosses on incidentalvocabulary acquisition, few studies ibcus on gloss positions, let alone taking intoconsideration the potential interaction effects of gloss position and textualenhancement, both of which are important variables of gloss presentation forms.Therefore, the present study has its own novelties. First，the gloss positions (pre-text,post-text) focused on in the present study are different from those in many otherstudies. Second, it is a new attempt to investigate these two independent variables(gloss position [pre-text, post-text] and textual enhancement [with textualenhancement, without textual enhancement]) into one study, thus making it possibleto explore the interaction effects between these two factors. Third，the study examinesboth immediate vocabulary retention and delayed vocabulary retention wheninvestigating the effects of different gloss presentation forms on incidental vocabularyacquisition.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Vocabulary acquisition
Vocabulary is one of the indispensable constituents of language, the importanceof which is widely recognized by researchers, teachers as well as learners. However,it experienced a relative neglect in the field of second language acquisition for a longtime. Fortunately, since the mid-1980s, there has been a renewed interest in the roleof vocabulary in L2 learning (Coady & Huckin，1997) and numerous researches havebeen done on vocabulary. In many of these studies, vocabulary acquisition has beenstudied from different perspectives. With regard to vocabulary knowledge, previousstudies generally focus on two dimensions: the depth of word knowledge and thebreadth of word knowledge. The former refers to quality, that is how well a word alanguage user has acquired, while the latter is concerned with quantity, which simplymeans how many words are known. In terms of how the words are learned oracquired, many of the previous researches have examined two techniques: intentionalvocabulary acquisition and incidental vocabulary acquisition. The latter one is whatthe present study focuses on.
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2.2 Incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading
Incidental vocabulary acquisition can occur in various learning activities, such aslistening, reading, writing and speaking. As to listening and incidental vocabularyacquisition, the studies are relatively fewer and they usually employ “retell” as thetool, among which the “4-3-2,，retell method is the most popular (Gai, 2003).Speaking tasks are mainly used to train students’ oral abilities, but to some extentthey facilitate vocabulary acquisition as well, which has been verified by Newton(1995). The "strip story" experiment carried out by Gibson (1975) tests incidentalvocabulary acquisition through speaking.Most studies on writing and incidental vocabulary acquisition are done bymaking a comparison with reading tasks (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001). Vocabularylearning is of great importance in learning to read. According to the survey of theauthor, there are more researches on reading and incidental vocabulary acquisition than on the above three aspects. Since the present study is about incidental vocabularythrough reading，the relationship between reading and incidental vocabularyacquisition will be discussed in great detail in this section.It has been widely agreed that reading comprehension is an effective way topromote incidental vocabulary acquisition (Huckin & Coady, 1999). Reading textsprovide language learners with a learning environment to be exposed to the newwords and be involved in vocabulary learning. Compared to other activities, readingcomprehension is more stable and inclusive in view of the diversity of its content andthe width of its coverage in daily language learning. Yet the innate disadvantages ofincidental vocabulary acquisition which has been mentioned in the previous partresult in some problems in incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. Thenext part will go into the problems in detail and then put forward some methods tocope with the existing problems.
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Chapter Three Research Methodology....... 27
3.1 Research Questions .......27
3.2 Research Design....... 28
Chapter Four Results and Discussion....... 36
4.1 Reliability of the vocabulary tests in the present study....... 36
4.2 The effects of different gloss positions on incidental.......37
4.3 The effects of textual enhancement.......42
4.4 The interaction effects of gloss position and textual enhancement.......46
Chapter Five Conclusion .......54
5.1 Major Findings .......54
5.2 Implications ....... 55
5.3 Limitations of the present study....... 57
5.4 Suggestions for further study .......58
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
This chapter will analyze the data obtained from the experiment in order toanswer the research questions of the present study, discuss the results and analyze theunderlying reasons or influencing factors. The SPSS 16.0 software has been employedto conduct two-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures on twofactors test. The two factors are: gloss position with two levels: pre-text and post-text;textual enhancement with two levels: with textual enhancement and without textualenhancement. The data of 17 randomly-selected subjects in each group weresubmitted to 2 (gloss position [pre-text, post-text] ) x 2 (textual enhancement [withtextual enhancement, without textual enhancement]) two-way ANOVAs.This chapter will first verify the reliability of the vocabulary tests and thenpresent the data obtained and discuss the effects of gloss position and textualenhancement on incidental vocabulary acquisition in terms of immediate retention anddelayed retention in order to answer the research questions of the present study.
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Conclusion
The last chapter presents the major findings of the present study as a whole,discusses the implications, point out the limitations of the present study and also offersuggestions for further study. The present study makes a tentative attempt to explore the effects of glossposition (pre-text, post-text) and textual enhancement on Chinese EFL learners'incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading from two perspectives: immediatevocabulary retention and delayed vocabulary retention. Each factor has two levels,resulting in four groups: Pre-with, Pre-without, Post-with, Post-without. It can beconcluded that this study discovers no superior advantage of one over anotherbetween pre-text glosses and post-text glosses whether in reading texts with textualenhancement or without textual enhancement.All in all, major findings of the present empirical study are as follows:First of all, different gloss positions (pre-text, post-text) do not have significantlydifferent effects on Chinese EFL learners' incidental vocabulary acquisition throughreading. Both the immediate vocabulary tests and the delayed vocabulary tests weredesigned and carried out, so as to probe into immediate vocabulary retention anddelayed vocabulary retention. Though the mean scores show favorable effects of thepre-text glosses, paired-samples t test reveals that the main effect of gloss position isnot significant: p = 0.071 (immediate); p = 0.367 (delayed).
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