The impact of glossing and reading activity manipulation on learning of L2 lexico-grammatical and lexical items

Abstract

The present study investigates the impact of glossing and reading activity manipulation on learning of target lexico-grammatical and lexical items. Eighty-eight Korean undergraduate students read either glossed or unglossed English texts. Each paragraph of the texts was split into two (less careful condition) or three to four subparts (more careful condition), and participants were asked to rearrange them into a coherent order and answer multiple-choice reading comprehension items. Glossing was conducted by providing Korean translations of target items, i.e. 15 English unaccusative verbs and 10 pseudowords. Learning was assessed with an untimed grammaticality judgment test and word form and meaning recognition tests. The results revealed that glossing affected word meaning recognition scores positively, but form recognition scores negatively. In addition, more careful reading facilitated learning of the target unaccusative verbs while having a negative influence on word meaning recognition scores. Neither glossing nor reading activity manipulation affected reading comprehension scores.