However. acquiring vocabulary incidentally through reading can’t achieve as much as we expect. 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.
So how to achieve the effectiveness and accuracy of incidental vocabulary acquisition arouses the public attention. And the researches relating to the effect of gloss on incidental vocabulary acquisition have shown new characteristics, shifting from whether gloss has a positive effect to what gloss can better promote L2 language acquisition. (Yoshi, 2006)
1.2 Significance of the Present Study
The present study is aimed to explore the effect of different dimensional gloss on vocabulary acquisition . Through the exploration, we hope to get a better understanding of the effects that those different gloss information and apply them effectively and efficiently in our daily vocabulary and organization of the text book.
What’s more, Readers who carry a purpose to enlarge their vocabulary through reading would benefit from the reading material provided with sufficient glossing information.
2.Literature Review源`自,优尔`.论"文'网[www.youerw.com
2.1 Researches both at Home and Abroad
Researchers have adopted 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).
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 further figure out which gloss would make a big difference. 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.
2.2 The Definition of Gloss
The history of glosses can be dated back to the Middle Ages when learners scribbling in the lines during reading the Latin text (Hullen, 1989, cited in Roby, 1999). Later gloss was developed into a kind of teaching aid and was gradually recognized as an efficient enhancement technique. Traditionally, glosses have been defined as short definitions or explanations which usually located in the margin or bottom of a text for the understanding of those unfamiliar words (Lomica, 1998). Davis & Lyman-Hager (1997), however, presented a more comprehensive gloss definition which indicates that gloss might encompass phonetic features, grammar, culture, L1 or L2 paraphrasing, etc.