Effects of L1 Versus L2 Audio and Textual Glosses on L2 Vocabulary Learning

Although a number of studies investigated the effects of different gloss types on L2 vocabulary learning, the interaction between the language and modality of glosses remains underexplored. The present study thus examined the effects of the modality and language of glossing on L2 vocabulary learning. To this end, the study employed a within-subjects design to test the impacts of four combinations of L1 versus L2 and audio-based versus text-based glosses on L2 lexical development. The participants were 49 EFL learners who read two texts, each including 28 unfamiliar words that were the same in both texts over two sessions. They were instructed to read the texts with their smartphones and touch the target words, which were underlined to see or hear the glosses, depending on the allocation of the target words to each treatment condition. The glosses associated with the target words in the texts included L1 and L2 text-based as well as L1 and L2 audio-based glosses, equally distributed among the target words. Two testing instruments, a meaning recall task and a cued production task, were used on two occasions after the treatment sessions as post-test and delayed post-test to measure the participants’ vocabulary growth. The results of mixed-effects linear regression modeling showed that L1 glosses were considerably more effective than L2 glosses, irrespective of modality. The findings also indicated a significant interaction between the language and modality of glossing. In particular, the audio-based L1 glosses proved significantly more effective than other glossing conditions, and the L2 audio-based glosses proved least effective among them. The results provide further insight into the role of the language and modality of glosses and have important implications for L2 vocabulary teaching.