Three approaches to glossing and their effects on vocabulary learning

Glossing facilitates the creation of correct form-meaning connections, but does not encourage inferring or word meaning retrieving. This study investigates the effects of combining glossing with inferring or meaning retrieval on vocabulary learning. One hundred and eighteen university students read a text with target words occurring three times, either glossed or unglossed, under one of three conditions. In the inference-gloss-gloss condition, participants inferred the word meaning in the first word encounter and were provided with glosses for the subsequent two word encounters. In the gloss-retrieval-gloss condition, participants were provided with glosses for the first and last word encounters but had to retrieve the word meaning in the second word encounter. In the full glossing condition, participants were provided with glosses for all the word encounters. Immediately after the intervention, all participants completed a comprehension test and three vocabulary posttests. They completed delayed vocabulary posttests 2 weeks later. The main results showed that the gloss-retrieval-gloss condition was the most effective at improving vocabulary learning. The study concludes that gloss-retrieval-gloss is facilitative to learning new words from context.