Glossing and Reading Comprehension

1
Glossing and Reading Comprehension

• Brian Gill
• April 2005
• http//fis.ucalgary.ca/Brian

2
Uses of Glossing

• A traditional way of helping readers, dating back
  to the Middle Ages
• More recently, a majority of L2 textbooks and
  reading texts provide notes, often at the bottom
  of the page, on vocabulary and cultural
  references
• On-line glossing, using hyperlinks, offer
  exciting possibilities. This has been studied,
  but is as yet little developed (Bougaïeff)

3
and - of Glossing

• Gives students access to difficult text without
  constant recourse to the dictionary.
• Provides text-specific meanings, obviating the
  need to select from multiple meanings in a
  dictionary
• May encourage focus on words rather than overall
  comprehension, thus hindering fluency.
• May be distracting and annoying.

4
Research Questions (1)

• Does glossing help vocabulary acquisition?
• Hulstijn et al. 1996 found that incidental
  vocabulary learning is higher when glosses or a
  dictionary are used.
• Does glossing improve reading comprehension?
• Mixed results Lomicka 1998 Jacobs et al. 1994
• Does glossing hinder reading fluency?
• When readers disrupt their reading to look at a
  gloss, the focus on individual vocabulary items,
  rather than larger conceptions of content and
  rhetorical mode, may interfere with the creation
  of an overall mental representation of the text
  linked with readers current knowledge bases.
  (Jacobs 1994 119)

5
Research Questions (2)

• Are unobtrusive glosses better than obvious ones?
• De Ridder 2000 and 2002
• What are the effects of different sorts of
  glosses (translation, image, question)?
• Chun and Plass 1996 found that recall for visual
  annotations was better than for text alone.
• Davis and Lyman-Hager 1997 found that given a
  choice, students accessed primarily English
  definitions
• Lomicka 1998 found that questions generated more
  inferences about the text.

6
Examples

• Reading French (University of Calgary)
• Histoire de Châli
• Les Ordures du Caire
• Easy French Literature (Université de
  Trois-Rivières https//oraprdnt.uqtr.uquebec.ca/p
  ls/public/atxw007?owa_no_recueil1owa_nom_recueil
  ELF