Abstract
Glosses or short explanations of vocabulary items are commonly found in language learning materials. Research that use offline learning measures to examine effects of glosses on learning found that they are useful in facilitating vocabulary acquisition and overall text comprehension. This paper reports a small-scale study that combined an offline measure of learning with online measures of reading behaviour in an attempt to provide a more comprehensive picture of reading and learning with glossed passages. The eye tracking methodology was used to provide insights into the cognitive processing of reading. A group of 15 university undergraduates read four glossed and non-glossed passages in English and answered comprehension questions afterwards. The findings revealed that glossed and non-glossed passages were read differently with readers attempting to integrate glosses and text information in the former. Vocabulary knowledge was found to predict comprehension performance and to some extent, the processing of glosses. The findings also suggest that moderate amount of attention could be more useful for comprehension as too much attention appeared to indicate comprehension difficulties. Suggestions to promote more strategic and useful processing of glossed passages are discussed. Keywords glosses; reading; processing; eye tracking; English as a second language
Highlights
The inclusion of glosses or annotations in texts is a common strategy to help facilitate the acquisition of new or difficult vocabulary items and aid overall text comprehension
The quantitative analysis was conducted on two eye tracking metrices, total fixation duration (TFD) and total fixation count (TFC) on the two types of passages
For the non-glossed passage, as there was only one areas of interest (AOIs), TFD was computed by summing up the duration for all fixations on the single AOI, whereas TFC was computed by summing up the frequency for all fixations on the AOI
Summary
The inclusion of glosses or annotations in texts is a common strategy to help facilitate the acquisition of new or difficult vocabulary items and aid overall text comprehension. Glosses provide readers with brief explanations, paraphrases, or translations of key vocabulary items in the text. Instead of interrupting reading by flipping the pages of a dictionary or typing away on a keyboard when googling the meaning of a word, readers can get a quicker explanation when glosses are integrated in the text. By allowing readers to look up the meaning of words, readers are provided with more opportunity to interact and engage with the text (Plass & Jones, 2005). Various studies have found that glosses do facilitate the learning of a second language (L2) and its various competencies such as vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension
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