Effects of Manipulating the Exposure Frequency of Glossed Words on Vocabulary Learning and Text Comprehension: A Study of Taiwanese Vocational High School Learners of English
| Autor: | Hung-sheng Lin, 林弘昇 |
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| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 98 The current study aims to manipulate different exposure frequencies of glossed words under two gloss conditions—single gloss(SG)condition and multiple-choice gloss(MG) condition and to compare their effects on vocabulary learning and text comprehension of Taiwanese EFL vocational high school learners. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design that recruited 72 students from two classes in a vocational high school. Thirty-six students were assigned to the SG condition and the others to the MG condition. All of the participants reached the minimum passing threshold in the reading section on the elementary level of the GEPT. One week before the treatment, the participants received a vocabulary pretest to check whether any of them had known the glossed words(i.e. target words) in the two treatment passages. There were eight glossed words embedded in each treatment passage—among them, two appeared once(F1)in the text; two appeared twice(F2); two appeared three times(F3); the rest appeared four times(F4). During the treatment, the participants had to read the treatment passages and answer several related text comprehension questions. Immediately after the treatment, the participants unexpectedly received a vocabulary posttest to determine whether they had learned/remembered the glossed words; they had to produce the L1 meaning of the glossed words in the provided sentence context. Two weeks later, the same vocabulary posttest was conducted again to test their delayed vocabulary recall. Several analysis methods(a two-way mixed-design ANOVA, a one-way repeated-measures ANOVA, an independent-samples t test and Pearson product-moment correlation)were conducted in the current study to explore and compare the effects of the two gloss conditions on the participants’vocabulary learning and text comprehension. The major findings of the current study are summarized as follows. 1.In terms of the participants’vocabulary learning: 1.1.In both the SG and MG conditions, the participants’frequent encounters with the glossed words in the text indeed yielded a facilitating effect on their vocabulary learning. 1.2.The participants in the MG condition, overall, could learn the glossed words significantly better than those in the SG condition on both the immediate and delayed vocabulary posttests. The significant difference between the MG and SG conditions, particularly, occurred on those F3 or F4 glossed words. This suggested that the participants in the MG condition could benefit more from multiple encounters with the glossed words in the text. That is, the more encounters they had with the glossed words in diverse contexts, the more likely they were able to (select and)retain the correct meaning of the glossed words longer than the participants in the SG condition. 1.3.The participants in the MG condition had a lower attrition rate of the word gains than those in the SG condition. However, no significant difference was found between the attrition rates in the two gloss conditions. It was also important to note that two weeks after the treatment, an obvious sharp decline in the participants’word gains(more than 50%)was observed under the MG condition. 2.In terms of the participants’text comprehension: 2.1.The participants in the MG condition could comprehend the treatment passages as well as those in the SG condition. 2.2.The participants’text comprehension was more significantly correlated with their vocabulary learning under the MG condition than under the SG condition. In conclusion, the findings of the current study implied that the Taiwanese EFL instructors and material editors should try to apply multiple-choice glosses in their teaching practice. They can enhance the effectiveness of multiple-choice glosses by exposing their learners repeatedly to the glossed words in the text. In this way, learners can have more opportunities to reevaluate the selected gloss items against different contexts and thereby, retain the correct meaning of the target vocabulary on their own. Besides, with multiple-choice glosses applied in the text, EFL learners can more efficiently learn the target vocabulary because they can comprehend the text and learn the target vocabulary at the same time. However, while the learners are learning vocabulary through multiple-choice glosses, the instructors should also be cautious about the possibility of their incorrect inferences and the problem of their word loss after a period of time. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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