A comparative study of the effectiveness of single-meaning, multiple-choice, and self-supplied glosses on second language vocabulary acquisition during reading

Glosses, as brief definitions provided for words in reading texts, have been extensively investigated regarding their usefulness in promoting second language vocabulary learning during meaning-focused reading. Supported by the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001), this study proposes self-supplied glosses as a novel type of gloss and compares their effectiveness with the traditionally examined single-meaning and multiple-choice glosses. 174 Chinese college-level learners of English participated in the study; each participant completed a reading task with a text containing 16 target words under one of the three glossed conditions or with no gloss. Vocabulary learning was measured through an immediate vocabulary posttest as well as a delayed posttest one week later in the form of meaning recall. The results generally show the effectiveness of all the three gloss types in facilitating vocabulary acquisition, both in the immediate and delayed posttests, although vocabulary retention dropped in the delayed posttest. Self-supplied glosses were found to be most effective of the three gloss types, and the effectiveness of single-meaning and multiple-choice glosses did not differ. Self-supplied glosses generated vocabulary gains that were prominently higher than those reported for the general effect of glosses in previous studies. The findings of this study are discussed in light of the Involvement Load Hypothesis as well as previous related research.