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DOI: 10.1191/1362168802lr108oa 2002; 6; 183 Language Teaching Research

Susanne Rott, Jessica Williams and Richard Cameron cycles on lexical acquisition and retention

The effect of multiple-choice L1 glosses and input-output

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The effect of multiple-choice L1glosses and input–output cycles onlexical acquisition and retentionSusanne Rott Department of German, University ofIllinois at ChicagoJessica Williams and Richard Cameron Department ofEnglish, University of Illinois at Chicago

The objective of the study was to determine the effect on lexicalacquisition and retention of: (a) L1 multiple-choice glosses, (b) L2 textreconstruction with opportunities to recheck input and (c) combinedtreatments. These treatments were chosen for the following reasons:multiple-choice glosses are said to require ‘mental effort’, increasing thelikelihood of retention. Reconstructing the text in the L2 may promptlearners to notice ‘holes’ in their lexicon and focus their attention onsubsequent input. Seventy-six fourth-semester learners of German reada text in one of the four conditions (3 experimental; 1 control).Productive and receptive word gains were tested immediately after thetreatment and again five weeks later. Findings suggest that the multiple-choice gloss treatment resulted in significantly deeper productive andreceptive word gains immediately after the treatment. A significantreceptive word gain was retained for five weeks only for the combinedtreatment condition.

I Introduction

It is a widely held view that, for many learners, much of secondlanguage vocabulary is acquired incidentally during reading formeaning. There is considerable empirical support for this claim(Cho and Krashen, 1994; Day et al., 1991; Dupuy and Krashen,1993; Pitts et al., 1989; Rott, 1999, 2000; Zahar et al., 2001). Eventhough it is slow and incremental, incidental acquisition is

© Arnold 2002 10.1191/1362168802lr108oa

Address for correspondence: Susanne Rott, Department of German 189, University ofIllinois at Chicago, 601 S. Morgan, Chicago, IL 60607, USA; phone: 312-413-2378;fax: 312-413-2377

Language Teaching Research 6,3 (2002); pp. 183–222




considered efficient, in that learners do two things at once. As theyread for text comprehension, they also expand their vocabulary.This is an incidental rather than deliberate consequence of thereader’s attempts to read for meaning. In addition, because readershave control over the pace of reading, they can take time to noticeand verify novel words in a way not possible with auditory input.

Although few researchers or practitioners would doubt the valueof extensive reading, many have questioned whether it is the mostefficient or effective way to acquire new vocabulary, in particular,for beginning learners (Bensoussan and Laufer, 1984; Haynes,1993; Hulstijn, 1992; Laufer, 1997). Coady (1997) has described thebeginner’s paradox, asking how L2 readers can learn enough words‘to learn vocabulary through extensive reading, when they do notknow enough words to read well’ (p. 229). Laufer has claimed thatthe lexical threshold for text comprehension is about 3000 wordfamilies and that successful word inferencing from context occursonly when between 95 and 98 per cent of the words in a text arefamiliar to the reader (1992, 1997; see also Nation and Coady, 1988;Nation, 2001). Many L1 and L2 researchers claim that there isa symbiotic relationship between reading and vocabularyacquisition: learners with high-level reading comprehension skillsare able to acquire broader and deeper vocabularies; learners withlarger vocabularies are able to comprehend text better (Coady,1997; Huckin and Haynes, 1993; Nation, 2001; Paribakht andWesche, 1999; Stoller and Grabe, 1993). Conversely, a smallvocabulary is a barrier to reading comprehension. Acquiringvocabulary while reading is particularly problematic for lower-levellearners. These learners may find the task of reading all consuming,nearly precluding the possibility of incidental vocabularyacquisition (Coady, 1993, 1997).

The relationship between reading comprehension and lexicalacquisition and retention is not well understood. Rott (1999) founda strong correlation between the two processes. However, otherresearch has repeatedly found that L2 readers often do not succeedin what is considered the first step in lexical acquisition, namely,the attempt to make sense of unfamiliar words during reading (seeLee and Wolf, 1997 for a detailed overview). Hulstijn et al. (1996)offer several reasons why a ‘reading only’ approach may not alwaysbe the best pedagogical option. First, learners may fail to notice

184 Multiple-choice L1 glosses and input–output cycles




unfamiliar words if these words are not pointed out to them.Secondly, if they do notice these words, learners may ignore themas unimportant or too much trouble to investigate. Thirdly, thecontext may not provide sufficient information to infer meaning,or to infer it correctly (Bensoussan and Laufer, 1984; Haynes, 1993;Hulstijn, 1992; Laufer, 1997). Fourthly, in contrast, if there is a richcontext such that meaning is easily inferred, readers may guessmeaning for momentary comprehension only and not for retention(Coady, 1993; Mondria and Wit-de-Boer, 1991; Nation and Coady,1988; Stein, 1983). Finally, low frequency of exposure to new wordsmay simply be insufficient for acquisition. This last considerationis particularly important for foreign language learners, who oftendo not receive extensive L2 written input. The one or two timesthat a word appears in an assigned text may be the only exposurethat learners have to it, probably falling short of the minimalrequirements for acquisition.

One clear goal of classroom language instruction is to speed upthe rate of lexical acquisition, so learners can meet the thresholdlevel required for independent reading. Therefore, the efficiency oflexical acquisition must be addressed since it may be optimistic toassume that lexical acquisition will occur through reading alone.The aim of this study is to determine how lexical acquisition andtext comprehension processes might be jointly facilitated,particularly among learners whose threshold vocabulary level maybe considered too low for them to acquire new words throughreading alone.

II Instructional interventions in lexical acquisition

In response to the drawbacks of relying solely on incidentalacquisition of vocabulary, especially at lower levels of languagelearning, a growing number of researchers have investigated theeffectiveness of various types of instructional interventions. In eachcase, the goal of intervention is to improve both the extent andspeed of lexical acquisition as well as reading comprehension.These interventions include the following:

(1) enhancement of texts to include several types of glosses(Davis, 1989; Holly and King, 1971; Hulstijn, 1992; Hulstijn et

Susanne Rott, Jessica Williams and Richard Cameron 185




al., 1996; Jacobs, 1994; Jacobs et al., 1994; Ko, 1995; Pak, 1986;Watanabe, 1997);

(2) an increase in the frequency of exposure to new words(Brown, 1993; Hulstijn et al., 1996; Rott, 1999);

(3) strategy training (Fraser, 1999; Joe, 1998; Zaki and Ellis, 1999);(4) access to a dictionary or other, multimedia resources (Chun

and Plass, 1996; Fraser, 1999; Hulstijn, 1993; Hulstijn et al.,1996; Knight, 1994; Luppescu and Day, 1993; Oskarsson, 1975);and

(5) post-reading vocabulary activities (Paribakht and Wesche,1997, 1999; Wesche and Paribakht, 2000; Zimmerman, 1997).

In some of these interventions, lexical acquisition remainsincidental; in others, instruction is aimed at intentional acquisition.We will focus on incidental lexical acquisition. Schmidt (1994)states that incidental learning can take place when the learner’sprimary intention is to complete another task, to read andunderstand a text, and not to learn new words. Specifically, hestates that incidental learning can occur ‘when the primary task (inthis case, reading for meaning) does not deplete attentionalresources and something about the relevant structure (e.g.,increased frequency or some sort of enhancement of the newword) attracts a learner’s attention’ (1994: 17; parentheticaladditions ours). Paribakht and Wesche (1999: 215) question thevery notion of incidental lexical learning since we cannot be surehow attention is allocated:

. . . vocabulary learning through reading is in some fundamental sense not‘incidental,’ at least from the learner’s perspective. Achieving any level ofinput processing by drawing on knowledge sources for information on themeaning of a word requires attention to a given new word and effort on thepart of the learner to find its meaning.

Indeed, instructional interventions are often an effort to drawlearner attention briefly away from the primary task of readingand toward the form and meaning of the new word, potentiallydecreasing the cognitive resources needed for text comprehensionor, at the very least, briefly interrupting the reading process. Thissituation echoes the definition of focus on form offered by Long(1991: 45–46), ‘[it] overtly draws students’ attention to linguisticelements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding





focus is on meaning or communication’. Although focus on formis an approach generally associated with grammatical acquisition,the parallels here in vocabulary acquisition are clear. At the sametime, because these interventions do draw learner attention andresources away from the intended goal of reading, it is essentialthat any investigation of the acquisition of vocabulary throughreading also monitor the effect of the interventions on textcomprehension.

III Effects of frequency

The least obtrusive manipulation is the increased frequency ofexposure. Studies of the effect of exposure frequency on L1vocabulary acquisition suggest that the process is slow and gradual,and that a single exposure may not lead to acquisition. Saragi etal. (1978) found that words appearing more than once in the textwere more likely to be acquired than those appearing only once,though high frequency did not guarantee acquisition. In a long-term study, Horst et al. (1998) found a relationship betweenfrequency of exposure and acquisition, with sizeable learning gainsamong words that appeared eight or more times in the text.

With this in mind, several quantitative experimental studies haveactively manipulated exposure frequency to determine moreprecisely its effect. Hulstijn et al. (1996) examined the effect offrequency on the word recognition by three groups of advancedlearners: (a) those who read a text with multiple-choice glosses forthe target words; (b) those who read the text and had access to adictionary; and (c) a control group who simply read the text. Allthree groups who had read texts with three exposures recognizedthe occurrence of the target word in the text to a significantlygreater degree than those who had read texts with only oneexposure. Rott (1999), in a study of intermediate foreign languagelearners, found that two exposures were enough to prompt smallbut measurable gains in vocabulary knowledge but that sixexposures resulted in significantly larger gains in both productiveand receptive knowledge.





IV Effects of glossing

Another common text enhancement is glossing, the practice ofproviding brief definitions for unfamiliar words somewhere nearthe text. Nation (2001: 175) lists some of the advantages of glossing:it allows uninterrupted reading; it provides readers access toauthentic texts that might otherwise be too difficult; it preventsincorrect assignment of meaning; and it draws learner attention tounknown words. Some additional advantages are that it can weanlearners from dependence on their teacher, and it tailorsinstruction in that learners need consult glosses only when they donot know a word.

Several studies have examined the effect of glossing on textrecall or reading comprehension. Pak (1986), Holly and King(1971), and Jacobs et al. (1994) found little effect, whereas Davis(1989), Jacobs (1994) and Watanabe (1997) found a significanteffect. Other studies have examined its effects on vocabularyacquisition, again, with mixed results. Holly and King (1971) founda significant effect, as did Jacobs et al. (1994), on an immediatepost-test for L1 and L2 glosses. However, the effect disappearedfour weeks later. Ko (1995), in contrast, observed the oppositebehaviour. On the immediate post-test the L1 and L2 glosscondition showed similar gains. One week later the L1 gloss con-dition yielded significantly higher word knowledge. Hulstijn et al.(1996) also demonstrated a superiority for marginal glosses in theL1 over both dictionary access and unaided inferring of meaning.

However, arguments have also been made against glossing. Themost important is that glossing may discourage guessing fromcontext, a strategic, hypothesis-testing skill considered crucial fordeveloping good reading comprehension. Others have argued thatinferred meanings are more likely to be retained than meaningsprovided by glosses (Hulstijn, 1992; Laufer and Hulstijn, 2001;Nation and Coady, 1988). This view is based on the ‘mental effort’hypothesis, that (1) inferring requires mental effort and (2) thegreater the mental effort, the better a learner’s recall and retentionof information acquired through that effort (Hulstijn, 1992, 2001).This claim is grounded in work in experimental psychology ondepth of processing (Craik and Tulving, 1975; Jacoby and Craik,1979).





Hulstijn (1992) proposed a solution, which combines theadvantages of inferring and glosses: the use of multiple-choiceglossing. He argues that this approach reduces the difficultiespresented by insufficient context as well as the possibility ofincorrect inferences. At the same time, it requires some degree ofmental effort and attention, both of which are thought toaccompany unassisted inferencing. He tested this possibility in aseries of studies, which led to mixed results. Three investigationsshowed a superior degree of vocabulary acquisition associated withmultiple-choice glosses over given meanings when glosses wereprovided in the L2. In contrast, another investigation, whichcompared the effect of a multiple-choice gloss in the L2 with atranslation gloss in the L1, demonstrated superior word gain forthe L1 gloss condition. Hulstijn further notes, however, that evenwithin the multiple-choice gloss group, many subjects chose thewrong meaning and suggests that the four alternatives he providedmay have been too many. Watanabe (1997), in a follow-up study,sought to correct this problem by offering only two alternatives inthe multiple-choice condition. His results, measured immediatelyafter the treatment and again one week later, demonstrated asuperiority for L2 glosses over inferred meanings, but no significantdifference between single and multiple-choice glosses.

V Effects of strategy training

Finally, a number of studies have investigated the enhancement ofvocabulary acquisition through strategy training in which learnersmay be required to use new words productively. This interventionmay, arguably, cross the line from incidental to intentional learning.Joe (1998) and Zaki and Ellis (1999) attempted to improvelearners’ vocabulary acquisition abilities by providing training ingeneration. Generative models of learning (Craik and Tulving,1975; Wittrock, 1974) claim that learning and retention areimproved when learners use, reformulate, or elaborate the newinformation, thereby creating connections between old and newknowledge. This process is referred to as generation. Joe examinedthe effect on vocabulary retention of a read-and-retell task withand without explicit training in generative processes. She found noeffect for strategy training, that is, no difference between the two





treatment groups. Zaki and Ellis examined the effect of the use ofguided generative output, in the form of critical questioning of thetext, on comprehension and incidental lexical acquisition. Trainingin the use of such questions proved highly effective for textcomprehension and recall, and a significant factor in lexicalacquisition. In contrast, the rates of incidental acquisition of boththe experimental and control groups were quite low.

VI Output in incidental vocabulary learning

It is possible that one of the reasons that generation can have aneffect on incidental acquisition is that these activities prompt thelearners to notice a need for a word that is not in their lexicon. Itmay be that it is this need, rather than the generation itself, whichenhances acquisition. Joe’s comparison group received no trainingin generative processing; instead, they practised reading andretelling a text, with full access to the text during the retellingphase. Thus, when learners encountered a gap in their knowledge,they could return to the input for the needed information. Thesubjects in the comparison group performed as well as those withgenerative training, leading Joe to conclude that ‘greater use andretrieval of the target form in recall is likely to strengthen thelearning pathway’ (1998: 375). Brown (1993) started out toinvestigate the effect of frequency of exposure and word saliencyon vocabulary acquisition. She found, however, that some of theexercises accompanying a videotape activity led learners tobecome aware of holes in their linguistic knowledge because thewords they needed had not yet appeared in the tape script. In otherwords, learners noticed that they needed a word, realized they didnot know the word in the L2, and returned to the input withheightened attention. This turned out to be the most importantfactor in word retention in her study. Thus, output may prompt areturn to the input with a newly found need to fill. This notion hasbeen discussed by Swain and Lapkin (1995: 386), who show howthe process takes place during composing:

. . . noticing may occur because of either internal or external feedback, whichmay prompt, for example, the generation of alternatives and assessment ofthem through simple inspection through to complex thinking. When learnerscannot work out a solution, they may turn to the input, this time with morefocused attention, searching for relevant input.





This is what Swain (1998: 66) later refers to as ‘noticing the hole’.This ‘hole’ is not so much a gap, or mismatch, between the learner’sinterlanguage and the target language, as a hole in theinterlanguage that the learner now has a clear need to fill. Izumiet al. (1999) tested the noticing function of output on theacquisition of hypothetical conditionals. Their subjects received theinput passage twice, each time followed by a written retell task.The researchers found a significant increase in the use of the targetstructure between the first and the second retell as well as on afree-writing task.

Need, along with search and evaluation, is a central componentin the construct involvement load, upon which, Hulstijn and Laufer(2001) claim, lexical acquisition and retention may depend.Although they emphasize that a higher level of involvement loadis not dependent on engaging learners in output, their studydemonstrated that an output task, such as writing a composition,led to a higher word gain compared to a reading plus fill-in-the-blank or a reading-only task.

The studies reviewed here reveal several common threads thatbear further investigation. First, increasing learner attention to newlexical items can result in a greater likelihood of acquisition andretention of those items. Techniques that do so unobtrusively canbalance these advantages without sacrificing the contextualrichness that accompanies new words during reading. The use ofglosses, in particular, multiple-choice glosses, is such a techniqueand is investigated in the present study. Secondly, there appears tobe a potentially valuable role for output in lexical acquisition, inthat it may prompt learners to notice holes in their lexicon andfocus their attention on subsequent input for ways to fill them. Thepresent study explores the effect of periodic L2 text reconstructionon lexical acquisition and retention.

VII Research questions

Our study examines the effect of multiple-choice glosses and textreconstruction on word acquisition, word retention and textcomprehension by fourth-semester German learners. Our first goalwas to determine the effect of multiple-choice glosses on unknownwords. The present investigation used L1 glosses because the





participants’ low level of vocabulary knowledge might have limitedtheir choice among the L2 glosses. Choosing among multipleglosses involves effort, specifically, some degree of search andevaluation, two components of involvement load (Laufer andHulstijn, 2001), which may play an important role in lexicalacquisition and retention. These are ‘two cognitive . . . dimensionsof involvement, contingent upon noticing and deliberatelyallocating attention to the form-meaning relationship’ (Laufer andHulstijn, 2001: 14). Thus, the use of multiple-choice glossesincreases that chances that readers will pay attention to thesewords and establish form–meaning connections.

The second goal of the study was to determine the effect of aL2 reconstruction task on text comprehension and on lexicalacquisition. This task was seen as a means for learners to noticeholes in their lexicon. These holes establish a need for the word,the third component of involvement load. According to Laufer andHulstijn (2001), this is a non-cognitive, motivational aspect oflexical learning. The goal in the case of output task in this study isto prompt learners to search the subsequent input for the wordsthey need.

Specifically, the present study investigated the following researchquestions:

1. What is the effect of multiple-choice L1 glosses on lexicalacquisition and retention, and on text comprehension?

2. What is the effect of reconstructing the text in the L2 on lexicalacquisition and retention, and on text comprehension?

3. What is the effect of the combined treatment on lexicalacquisition and retention, and on text comprehension?

VIII Method

1 Participants

The participants in this study were 85 fourth-semester learners ofGerman. The learners were spread across two large publicuniversities in the Midwest since neither institution offered asufficient number of sections of fourth-semester German for theadministration of four different treatments. All students had beenplaced in this fourth-semester course, either as result of a





placement test or successful completion of the third semester. Allof the learners followed the same or an equivalent communicativelanguage curriculum using similar approaches. All instructors gothrough a mandatory pre-semester training, a methods course, andare observed by the language programme co-ordinator in order tomaintain consistency across sections.1

Based on a background questionnaire, which was administeredto all participants, we excluded data from two learners whoindicated that they speak German at home or with friends outsidethe classroom. We also excluded data from seven learners who didnot complete all treatment or assessment tasks. Therefore, the finalanalysis was based on 76 subjects.

2 Materials

The input passage was an adaptation of Shade for Sale: a ChineseTale (Dresser, 1994; see Appendix A). This short story was chosenfor the following reasons. First, the text (535 words) could easilybe read within a 50-minute class period. Secondly, it containedvocabulary accessible to participants. Because these fourth-semester learners are below or close to the threshold level of 3000words, a passage with high-frequency vocabulary is appropriate.Experienced language instructors at both institutions confirmedthat the average fourth-semester student would know enough ofthe words in the passage to comprehend the passage well.2 Thirdly,the story presented a clearly developed story line, encouraging thetop-down predictions that can assist text comprehension.

The story was translated into German by one of the authors, anative speaker, with the following modifications: some low-frequency words were replaced with higher-frequency words,passive voice was replaced by active voice, and the two mainfigures were given names in order to distinguish clearly betweenthem. In addition, changes were made to accommodate an equalnumber of repetitions (four) of each of the target words (TWs).This meant including extra sentences or extending sentences.3

It has been repeatedly pointed out (e.g., Fukkink et al., 2001;Henriksen, 1999; Nation, 2001; Schmitt, 2000) that learningvocabulary is not an all or nothing proposition. Word meaning isacquired gradually. Because of the difficulty of establishing





learners’ initial state in the acquisition of individual word, wordsthat are completely unknown are a reliable starting point. Toensure that the TWs were completely unknown to the learners, thefollowing low-frequency items were used in the input passage:

Kaff villageEiche oak treeStube parlourVieh livestock

These TWs are concrete nouns that were essential to the mainideas of the passage. Reconstructions of English native speakerbaseline story texts (see below) showed that although not all fourTWs and all occurrences were of equal importance to passagecomprehension, use of each of the TWs was essential toreconstructing the passage. The context of the first occurrence ofeach TW did not provide many clues to its meaning; however, eachsuccessive instance contained an increasing number of contextualclues. Only four TWs were chosen in order to minimize anyproblems in text comprehension that might have been caused bya larger number of unknown words. The text contains 535 words,but only 167 lemmas. Four words represent between 2 and 3 percent of this figure, well within the 95–98 per cent range claimed tofacilitate acquisition of unknown words during reading.

3 Treatments

a Glosses The text contained multiple-choice glosses for thefour TWs and seven additional sets of glosses for distractor words.Husltijn (1992) suggests that the four choices in his own study mayhave been overwhelming, perhaps leading subjects to choose thewrong meaning. In the present study, readers also had four choices:the correct meaning of the word, two additional meanings thatwould make sense in the present context, and a ‘don’t know’option. For example, the first encounter with the TW Eiche in theinput passage read:

Er baute eine Villa neben eine grosse Eiche.

He built a mansion beside a large oak tree.





Readers selected from among the following choices: (a) river, (b)wall, (c) kind of tree, (d) don’t know.

Students were instructed to circle the word whose meaning bestfitted the context. This requirement ensured that readers indeedattended to the gloss. The glosses for the TW appeared twice inthe passage, at the first and the fourth TW encounter. The twoglossed occurrences (1 and 4) of the TWs were also boldfaced inthe passage; occurrences 2 and 3 were not visually enhanced.

b L2 Text reconstruction The input passage was divided intofour sections, each section on a separate page. On a blank page,which followed each section, participants were asked to reconstructthis part of the story in German. They were instructed not to turnback to previous pages. The purpose of the L2 reconstruction taskwas twofold. It prompted learners to think about and produce thetextual propositions they had just read. Also, it prompted learnersto either produce text containing the TWs, strengthening theform–meaning connection, or, if students could not produce theTW, to ‘notice the hole’, in other words, to notice that they neededa TW which they could not produce. This in turn might heightenlearners’ awareness of the TW during subsequent encounters.

Four packets of materials were assembled for the threetreatment groups and one control group. Intact classes wererandomly assigned to one of four conditions. It would have beenpreferable to randomly assign participants within each class to oneof the four treatment conditions. However, this was not feasiblebecause the time allotted to each subtask differed acrossconditions. This lack of randomization means that the results ofthis study must be interpreted with some caution.

1. gloss + L2 text reconstruction (G + R)2. gloss (G only)3. no gloss + L2 text reconstruction (R only) 4. control (C)

All treatments were followed by the same assessment tasks in thesame order: L1 retell, Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS), andWord Recognition Test (WRT). These tasks are detailed in theassessment section.





c Hypotheses The first three hypotheses focus on the effect ofthe treatments on lexical acquisition.

� Hypothesis I: The G only group will demonstrate greaterreceptive and productive word knowledge than the controlgroup (C).

� Hypothesis II: The R only group will demonstrate greaterreceptive and productive word knowledge than the controlgroup (C).

� Hypothesis III: The G + R group will demonstrate greaterreceptive and productive word knowledge than the three othergroups.

The second set of hypotheses addresses the effect of thetreatments on text comprehension.

� Hypotheses IV: The G only group will demonstrate greater textcomprehension than the control group (C).

� Hypothesis V: The R only group will demonstrate greater textcomprehension than the control group (C).

� Hypothesis VI: The G + R group will demonstrate greater textcomprehension than the three other groups.

4 Assessment tasks

a Vocabulary pretest To ensure that the TWs were unfamiliar toall participants, a vocabulary checklist test was administered priorto the reading treatment. Students received a list of 20 lexical itemsincluding the 4 TWs and 16 distracters. Students were asked toexplain what each one meant, even if they had only a vague idea,and to cross out only the words that they did not know at all. Noneof the participants claimed any knowledge of the TWs.

b Text comprehension Before starting the reading treatment,students were informed that after completing the entire text theywould have to retell, in English, the content of the passage. Thiswas done to ensure that participants focused on processingmeaning during the task. Text comprehension was assessed in theirL1, English, rather than their L2, so that their production skillswould not interfere with the demonstration of text comprehension.





c Word gain To assess immediate word knowledge gain andretention, two vocabulary tests were administered immediatelyafter reading the input passage and again five weeks later. Learnersfirst completed a modified Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS)4

based on Wesche and Paribakht (1996) (Table 1). ‘The scale ratingsrange from complete unfamiliarity, through recognition of theword and some idea of its meaning, to the ability to use the wordwith grammatical and semantic accuracy in a sentence’ (p. 29). Inaddition, learners completed a word recognition test (WRT) withthe TW in its original context of the passage and the multiple-choice glosses (see Appendix B). In the discussion, results of theVKS will be referred to as productive knowledge, although it isonly at later stages that there is evidence for such knowledge.Results of the WRT will be referred to as receptive knowledge.

IX Procedure

During the first week of the semester learners signed aparticipation agreement and completed the vocabulary checklistpretest. Two weeks later, the treatment was administered by theregular instructor during their normal 50-minute class session.Appropriateness of time limits and instructions had beendetermined by a pilot study conducted with similar students in aprevious semester. The instructions for the individual treatmentgroups differed, as follows:

� Time for reading. In an effort to ensure that readers in all fourconditions had the same amount of time to read the passage,learners in the reading plus L2 text reconstruction conditionwere allowed 30 minutes to complete the task; the other twogroups, who did not engage in the L2 text reconstruction, wereallowed 20 minutes to complete the reading task.

� Reconstructing a section. Students in the L2 reconstructioncondition were instructed not to turn back to the section theyhad just read once they had proceeded to the L2 textreconstruction page.

� Indicating choice of gloss. Learners in the gloss condition wereinstructed to circle their choice as they encountered the wordin the text and not go back to change their initial answer.






Tab

le 1

Ad

apte

d V

KS

sco

rin

g c

ateg

ori

es a

nd

mea

nin

g o

f sc

ore

s

Cat

ego

ries

Po

ssib

leM

ean

ing

of

sco

res

sco

re

a)I

do

n’t

rem

emb

er h

avin

g s

een

th

is w

ord

.1

Th

e w

ord

is

no

t fa

mili

ar a

t al

l.

b)

I h

ave

seen

th

is w

ord

bu

t I

do

no

t kn

ow

wh

at2

Th

e w

ord

is

fam

iliar

bu

t it

s m

ean

ing

is

no

tit

mea

ns.

kno

wn

.

c)I

thin

k it

mea

ns

(En

glis

h t

ran

slat

ion

).3

A c

orr

ect

syn

on

ym o

r tr

ansl

atio

n i

s g

iven

.

d)

Try

to u

se t

his

wo

rd i

n a

sen

ten

ce i

n G

erm

an.

4T

he

wo

rd i

s u

sed

ap

pro

pri

atel

y in

a s

ente

nce

.

No

te:

Ad

apte

d f

rom

Wes

che

and

Par

ibak

ht

(199

6).




Participants in all treatment conditions then had 10 minutes toretell the story in English without returning to the passage. Finally,students had 5 minutes to complete the two vocabulary knowledgetasks (VKS and WRT). Five weeks later, lexical retention wasassessed with the same two vocabulary knowledge tasks. Again,students had 5 minutes to complete them.

X Scoring

1 Comprehension

L2 readers’ text comprehension was measured with a L1 retelltask. Previous studies that have assessed the relationship betweenacquisition and text comprehension used either a variation ofBernhardt’s (1991) idea unit analysis (Bernhardt, 1991; Lee, 1998;Rott, 1999) or provided learners with a set of comprehensionquestions (Watanabe, 1997). Whereas comprehension questionstarget a few isolated ideas, idea unit analysis is based on theretelling of each individual idea unit of the text. Idea units can beweighted according to their relevance in the text, but the analysisdoes not necessarily differentiate between readers whocomprehended the text well and readers who comprehended thetext less well. A detail-oriented reader who retells many details butdid not understand the main ideas might receive the same scoreas a reader who does not report many details but understood themain ideas of the passage. Our goal was to determine whether theparticipants had understood the basic event structure of the story,not whether they could recall specific details. For these reasons,the story was reduced to a set of 14 chronologically orderedpropositions, based on native speaker retells and our own notionof what was most important in the story (see Appendix C). Wethen asked 20 more native speakers of English to retell the storyin writing. Most native speakers (11) produced all 14 propositions;all of them produced at least 10. Inter-rater reliability in coding forthese propositions was 100 per cent.

2 Word gain

VKS scoring was adapted5 from Wesche and Paribakht (1996:30ff.). The self-reported categories, a–d (Table 1) were counted as





follows: (a) and (b) lead to level 1 and 2 scores respectively.Category (c) could lead to either a score of 2, if the translationprovided by the learner was wrong, or to a score of 3, if thetranslation was correct. Likewise, wrong responses in (d) resultedin a score of 2. If a learner demonstrated correct knowledge of theTW but did not use the word appropriately in the sentence, a scoreof 3 was given. A score of 4 was given, if the word was usedcorrectly in a sentence.

Scoring the WRT was a matter of counting the correctly checkedanswers for the four possible choices. A correct answer receivedthe score of 1 and an incorrect choice received the score of 0.

XI Results

1 Lexical acquisition and retention

The descriptive statistics for receptive (WRT) and productive(VKS) word knowledge assessed immediately after the readingtreatment (acquisition) and five weeks later (retention) arereported in Table 2.

Q–Q probability plots of individual cell means showed that


Table 2 Means and standard deviations for treatment conditions

Acquisition Retention

Condition N VKS WRT VKS WRT

G + R 12M 13.67 3.42 10.00 3.00SD 1.92 .79 2.48 .95

G only 14M 12.79 2.93 8.57 2.14SD 2.39 .99 1.94 1.23

R only 15M 9.20 2.53 8.06 1.93SD 2.73 .83 1.94 .88

C 35M 9.09 1.97 8.71 1.82SD 3.47 1.22 2.49 1.15

Note: VKS = vocabulary knowledge scale; WRT = word recognition test; VKSmaximum score = 16; WRT maximum score = 4; G + R = gloss + L2 textreconstruction; R only = L2 text reconstruction; G only = gloss; C = control group.




normal distribution of the data could not be assumed. Non-parametric analyses are therefore required. To examine thetreatment effect on lexical acquisition, a Mann-Whitney U test wasused (Table 3). Because multiple comparisons were conducted, thelevel of significance was set at p < 0.01. The effect of multiple-choice L1 glosses on receptive and productive word knowledgegain immediately after treatment and five weeks later wereassessed through comparisons of the gloss only (G only) conditionswith the control (C) condition. The pairwise comparison of cellmeans resulted in mixed findings. The G only treatment resultedin significantly more immediate receptive (M = 2.93 vs. M = 1.97)and productive (M = 12.79 vs. M = 9.09) word gain than the controlgroup. However, the superior word gain for the G condition wasnot retained five weeks later (receptive: M = 2.14 vs. M = 1.82;productive: M = 8.57 vs. M = 8.71). Thus, hypothesis I, that thelearners in gloss condition would gain and retain more wordknowledge than learners in the control condition, was partiallysupported.

The second issue addressed in this study was the effect of L2text reconstruction on receptive and productive word knowledge.Results revealed that for these learners, L2 text reconstruction didnot yield higher word gain, neither immediately after reading norfive weeks later, than the unenhanced control condition.Hypothesis II, that the learners in the L2 text reconstruction


Table 3 Mann-Whitney U follow-up analyses: pairwise comparisons ofacquisition and retention scores

Acquisition Retention

Comparison VKS WRT VKS WRT

G only vs. C 79.00* 132.50* 228.00 202.50

R only vs. C 214.00 190.00 229.50 249.50

G + R vs. G only 63.50 58.00 60.50 50.00

G + R vs. R only 16.00* 40.5* 52.5 37.5*

G + R vs. C 52.00* 73.5* 142.5 93.00*

Note: *p < 0.01 because of multiple comparisons; VKS = vocabulary knowledgescale; WRT = word recognition test; G + R = gloss + L2 text reconstruction; R only= L2 text reconstruction; G only = gloss; C = control group.




treatment condition would gain and retain more word knowledgethan learners in the control condition, was thus rejected.

The effect of the combined treatment (G + R) yielded mixedresults when compared to the G only, R only and control condition(C). There was a tendency in the G + R condition toward superiorperformance compared to the G only condition, but this differencewas not significant, neither immediately after treatment nor fiveweeks later. However, the combined treatment did result insignificantly greater word gain than in the R only and the controlconditions (immediate post-test – receptive: M = 3.42 vs. M = 2.53and M = 1.97; productive: M = 13.67 vs. M = 9.20 and M = 9.09; fiveweeks later – receptive: M = 3.0 vs. M = 1.93 and M = 1.82). Anexception was productive word knowledge five weeks after thetreatment (M = 10.0 vs. M = 8.06 and M = 8.71), for which therewas no significantly greater word gain for the G + R condition.Hypothesis III, that learners in the G + R treatment condition wouldgain and retain more word knowledge than learners in the otherthree conditions, was partially supported.

Tables 4 and 5 present a qualitative breakdown of the data ofthe WRT and the VKS measures, respectively. The frequency


Table 4 Percentage of subjects who gained 4, 3, 2, 1, or 0 words on thereceptive Word Knowledge Measure (WRT) at time of acquisition and retention

Time Condition

G + R G only R only C(N = 12) (N = 14) (N = 15) (N = 35)

Acquisition4 words 58% (7) 21% (3) 6% (1) 11% (4)3 words 25% (3) 64% (9) 53% (8) 26% (9)2 words 17% (2) 7% (1) 27% (4) 23% (8)1 word 0 7% (1) 13% (2) 29% (10)0 words 0 0 0 11% (4)

Retention4 words 33% (4) 7% (1) 0 6% (2)3 words 42% (5) 43% (6) 27% (4) 23% (8)2 words 17% (2) 21% (3) 47% (7) 37% (13)1 word 8% (1) 14% (2) 20% (3) 17% (6)0 words 0 14% (2) 6% (1) 17% (6)

Note: G + R = gloss + L2 text reconstruction; R only = L2 text reconstruction; Gonly = gloss; C = control group.




distributions of the WRT measure (Table 4) give a clearer pictureof the superior word gain of the gloss (G only) condition. Eighty-five per cent of the participants who had access to multiple-choiceglosses gained receptive word knowledge of three or four TWs, ascompared to 59 per cent in the R only group and 35 per cent inthe control group. Even five weeks later, superior word knowledgewas retained. Fifty per cent of learners in the G only conditionretained knowledge of at least three TWs, compared to the R onlycondition (27 per cent) and the control group (29 per cent). Anadvantage is also evident for the combined treatment (G + R) overthe three other conditions, immediately after treatment and fiveweeks later. Fifty-eight per cent of the G + R readers gained allfour TWs as compared to 6 per cent (R only), 21 per cent (G only)and 11 per cent (C). This superior word gain was retained over fiveweeks (33 per cent vs. 0 per cent, 7 per cent, 6 per cent,respectively).

Table 5 addresses depth6 of lexical knowledge. It divides theimmediate post-test VKS score in two levels of word knowledge:


Table 5 Percentage of receptive and productive word knowledge assessedthough the VKS

Condition VKS scoring

Noticing Productive(b) (c–d)

G + R Acquisition 27% (13) 73% (35)Retention 63% (30) 37% (18)

R only Acquisition 63% (38) 35% (21)Retention 85% (51) 15% (9)

G only Acquisition 32% (18) 68% (38)Retention 82% (46) 18% (10)

C Acquisition 76% (107) 20% (28)Retention 79% (111) 19% (26)

Note: G + R = gloss + L2 text reconstruction; R only = L2 text reconstruction; Gonly = gloss; C = control group; figures do not add up to 100% because level a(no knowledge) from the VKS was not included here.




noticing (level b) and productive (levels c and d). The figuresrepresent the number of times that a level (b through d) wasselected by participants in each group. The frequency distributionclearly demonstrates that participants in the G only conditiongained greater depth of word knowledge, namely productive wordknowledge (68 per cent), than the R only (35 per cent) and thecontrol (C) condition (20 per cent) immediately after thetreatment. However, this greater depth of word knowledge was notretained over five weeks. The combined condition (G + R) showsa similarly high level of productive word knowledge immediatelyafter treatment (73 per cent) but also shows considerably higherretention of this productive knowledge (37 per cent) than the otherthree conditions (R only: 15 per cent; G only: 18 per cent; C: 19per cent).

2 Text comprehension

Hypotheses IV, V and VI addressed the effect of the treatmentconditions on text comprehension. Means and standard deviationsof L1 retell scores are reported in Table 6.

Again, a Mann-Whitney U test (Table 7) was used to conductpairwise comparisons. The level of significance was set at p < 0.01.Text comprehension scores of the treatment group who had read


Table 6 Mean and standard deviation of L1 retell

Condition N Number of text propositions

G + R 12M 10.25 (73%)SD 3.25

R only 15M 7.33 (52%)SD 3.53

G only 14M 9.35 (67%)SD 3.79

C 35M 5.60 (40%)SD 3.58

Note: Maximum score = 14; G + R = gloss + L2 text reconstruction; R only = L2text reconstruction; G only = gloss; C = control group.




the text with multiple-choice glosses were compared to scores ofthe group who had read the text without glosses. Assessment wasmade by means of an L1 retelling of the text. Glossing resulted insignificantly better text comprehension (M = 9.35) compared to theno gloss groups (R only: M = 7.33; C: M = 5.60). Hypothesis IV, thattextual enhancement through glosses would lead to greater textcomprehension compared to the control condition, was supported.

Next, we assessed the effect of an L2 text reconstruction oncomprehension as compared to reading without an outputrequirement. The comparison did not reach a level of significance.Hypothesis V, that the L2 text reconstruction would lead to greatertext comprehension than the control condition, was rejected.

The effect of the G + R treatment condition was compared tothe G only, the R only, and the control group on textcomprehension. Learners in the G + R condition (M = 10.25)showed a tendency toward superior comprehension but thetreatment did not result in significantly better text comprehensionthan the G only (M = 9.35) and R only conditions (M = 7.33).However, the G + R condition resulted in significantly greater textcomprehension than the control condition (M = 5.60). HypothesisVI, that the G + R condition would lead to greater text compre-hension than the other three conditions, was partially supported.

Finally, we asked whether learners who demonstrated word gainafter the reading treatment would retain word knowledge over fiveweeks. A Wilcoxon within-subject dependent sample analysis wasconducted between acquisition and retention scores (Table 8).


Table 7 Mann-Whitney U analysis: pairwise comparisons of L1 retell scores

Comparison df L1 retell

G only vs. C 2 118.50*

R only vs. C 2 185.00

G + R vs. G only 2 69.00

G + R vs. R only 2 49.00

G + R vs. C 2 62.00*

Note: *p. < 0.01 because of multiple comparisons; G + R = gloss + L2 textreconstruction; R only = L2 text reconstruction; G only = gloss; C = controlgroup.




The loss of word knowledge reached significant levels in thefollowing four cases: The G + R condition showed a significant lossof productive knowledge, and learners in the R only condition losta significant amount of receptive word knowledge. Those in the Gonly condition lost both receptive and productive word knowledge.Learners in the control condition, in contrast, retained productiveand receptive word knowledge over five weeks. Thus, HypothesesI through VI, which posited that word gain in all four treatmentconditions would be retained over a period of five weeks, were onlypartially supported.

A summary of all of the results appears in Table 9.


Table 8 Wilcoxon follow-up within-subject analysis of acquisition and retentionscores

Condition df VKS WRT

G + R 2 –2.95* –1.67

R only 2 –1.52 –2.31*

G only 2 –3.09* –2.48*

C 2 –.09 –.76

Note: *p < 0.05; VKS = vocabulary knowledge scale; WRT = word recognition test;G + R = gloss + L2 text reconstruction; R only = L2 text reconstruction; G only =gloss; C = control group.

Table 9 Summary of hypotheses

Hypothesis

I partially supportedimmediate gain yesretention no

II rejected

III partially supported: vs. R only/Cimmediate gain – productive yesimmediate gain – receptive yesretention – productive noretention – receptive yes

rejected: vs. G only

IV supported

V rejected

VI supported: vs. Crejected: vs. R only/G only




XII Discussion

The current investigation confirmed previous research demon-strating that receptive and productive word knowledge gain cantake place incidentally. Whereas reading in normal (unenhanced)7

reading conditions resulted in modest word gain, experimentalinterventions resulted in superior gains in vocabulary breadth anddepth.

One major goal of this study was to assess whether a hypothesis-testing strategy for inferring word meaning through the use of L1multiple-choice glosses leads to better word learning and retentionthan inferring word meaning without the help of glosses. Theprovision of multiple-choice glosses did have an immediatepositive effect on receptive as well as productive word knowledge.These results confirm findings from previous investigations, whichfound a significant effect for multiple-choice glossing on wordlearning immediately after the reading treatment (Hulstijn, 1992;Watanabe, 1997). Those investigations assessed the impact ofmultiple-choice glosses immediately after the treatment (Hulstijn)or two weeks later (Watanabe). The present study extended theretention time and found that readers with access to L1 glosses didnot retain any more word knowledge after five weeks than readersin the control condition. An interpretation of this finding maysuggest that the mental effort exerted through processing multiple-choice glosses did not lead to the sufficiently deep level ofprocessing that is claimed to promote long-term retention ofform–meaning connections. It is possible that, in terms of Lauferand Hulstijn’s construct of involvement load (2001), the search andevaluation demands of using multiple-choice gloss conditions weretoo low to be effective, or that learners did not approach the taskin the way the researchers had anticipated. Instead of theanticipated learner–text interaction, involving the assessment ofeach gloss option in the context of the passage, the search mayhave simply involved a quick glance at the right-hand margin. Theevaluation aspect of the task required recognizing the differenceamong the choices. Laufer and Hulstijn term this level ofprocessing ‘moderate’. Readers did not have to come up with theirown hypotheses about the meaning of the TWs. Therefore, somelearners might have simply focused their attention on these glosses





momentarily to aid text comprehension without retrieving ormaking associations with existing knowledge. Further, qualitativeresearch is needed to describe and analyse the decision-makingprocess of choosing a multiple-choice option.

The second major goal of the study was to assess whetherinput–output cycles of reading and reconstructing text fosters wordlearning better than a normal reading situation (control condition).The L2 reconstruction task was aimed at creating a need for theTW, prompting readers to notice the ‘hole’ (Swain, 1998) in theirlexicon as well as the needed TW in the subsequent input. Sincethe learners were required to reconstruct the text in four separatesections and the TWs appeared four times in the reading passage,learners had repeated opportunities both to notice the hole andthe relevant words in subsequent input for use in the next outputcycle. Yet, as in Izumi et al. (1999), the current findings did not showenhanced learning for the reconstruction condition. A variety ofreasons may explain the lack of superior word learning in thistreatment condition. First of all, the task did not control the needto use the TWs, even though the instructions prompted the readersto retell the passage in as much detail as possible. Similarly, thetask provided repeated opportunities but did not require thatstudents search for meaning. At this proficiency level, learnersmight have completed the text reconstruction task with aminimalist approach – by simply skipping unfamiliar words withoutany attempt to ‘fill the hole’.

Secondly, as suggested by Izumi et al., repeated input of targetforms, here the TWs, during normal reading (control condition)may have been sufficient for learners to notice the form. Learnersin all conditions seem to notice the words at some level, even fiveweeks later, reporting on the VKS measure that they had seen thewords before. However, the need to produce the TW did not leadto any increased learning beyond what resulted from the repeatedoccurrence of the TW in the control condition. Indeed, the L2output task, when not accompanied by helpful glosses, may havehindered word learning and text comprehension because it mayhave been too demanding for learners with relatively low L2production skills.

Thirdly, despite the researchers’ efforts to provide sufficientcontextual clues, particularly for readers in the conditions with no





glosses, these may not have been sufficient, or readers may nothave used them. In Rott (2000), for example, even where L2readers were aware of the repeated occurrence of the TW andnoticed it, this did not automatically result in correct meaningassignment and understanding. Schmidt (1995) has made adistinction between the two levels of awareness of target forms;namely, noticing of the phonological or orthographic form of aword and understanding its meaning and syntactic features.

Output may indeed have a limited role for initial meaningassignment. Even if L2 readers ‘notice the hole’ through an outputtask, their ability to assign meaning to the word depends on anumber of other variables, such as context comprehension, use ofcontext to infer meaning, and background and content knowledge(e.g., Hulstijn et al., 1996). In fact, generative tasks, such as this textreconstruction task are aimed more at strengthening connectionsand retention than initial assignment of meaning. Within thegenerative model of learning, tasks that require the learner toelaborate the input and generate associations with prior experienceand knowledge are considered ideal for promoting transfer of newknowledge to long-term memory. However, if learners are unableto assign initial meaning, generation may be impossible, and thusretention unlikely. Finally, if, as suggested above, learners assignedmeaning for comprehension purposes only, they may not haveactivated any existing knowledge or integrated the new TWmeaning. That is, participants may have never stored the meaningof the TWs in long-term memory. Participants might have simplysubstituted a higher frequency word for the TW as they read thetext. Indeed, many retells contained higher frequency nearsynonyms or hypernyms, such as Baum (tree) for Eiche (oak) andTiere (animals) for Vieh (livestock).

For the present participants, then, it is not clear that repeatedopportunity for output significantly strengthened the word–meaning association, even once word meaning was inferredcorrectly with the help of the multiple-choice gloss. The combined(G + R) condition showed a tendency for more receptive andproductive word gain than the G only reading conditionimmediately after reading, as well as five weeks later, though thistendency was not significant. Compared to the control group,learners in the G + R condition performed significantly better on





the immediate post-test for both productive and receptive wordgain, and five weeks later, on receptive knowledge. Likewise, thegloss groups had significantly better scores then the control groupsimmediately after treatment, but these gains were no longersignificant five weeks later. The combination of these two resultssuggests that the output activity may play a role in the longevityof the intervention’s impact, although the multiple-choice glossesappear to have a stronger effect on initial word acquisition than aL2 text reconstruction task.

Learners in all three groups lost apparent word knowledge overthe course of five weeks. In general, it can be said that learnerswho gained the most word knowledge immediately after readingthe input passage also lost the most within five weeks. As can beseen in Figure 1, participants who read the text under normalconditions demonstrated moderate word gain immediately afterthe treatment but retained this word gain over five weeks. Incontrast, many of the learners in the treatment groups showedsignificant diminution in word knowledge five weeks later.However, it is important to underline that these statistics are


Figure 1 Receptive and productive word knowledge at time of acquisition andretention for German conditions (G + R = gloss + L2 text reconstruction, R only =L2 text reconstruction, G only = gloss, C = control group)




somewhat misleading. Participants in the control condition showedlittle word loss over the five-week period following the treatment,but this is largely because word learning was so modest in the firstplace. Those learners with high acquisition scores had moreknowledge to lose. In fact, receptive and productive wordknowledge of speakers in the G + R condition five weeks later wasthe highest of any group. This is particularly apparent as regardsdifferences in depth of knowledge (‘c’ or ‘d’ on the VKS), with thelearners in G + R group demonstrating productive knowledge intwice as many cases as the learners in any other condition.

Although it has been repeatedly suggested that acquisition andcomprehension are related but separate processes, ideally,interventions should promote both processes. We thereforeassessed whether the interventions would improve textcomprehension. This was important because both treatmentspotentially interrupted the flow of normal (unenhanced) textprocessing. The interventions in this study did improve textcomprehension. In particular, the G only and the combined G + Rconditions resulted in significantly better text comprehension,compared to the normal reading condition. In fact, readers in theG + R group comprehended the text almost twice as well thanthose in the control condition (73 per cent vs. 40 per cent, Table6). This suggests that the glosses and a reconstruction task did notdistract these L2 readers from reading text for meaning butinstead, significantly aided text comprehension. The G onlycondition also produced significantly higher scores than the controlcondition, though not as high as those in the combined G + Rcondition. The R only treatment was of limited value and resultedonly in slightly better text comprehension than in the controlcondition.

XIII Conclusions and limitations

In general, our findings reconfirm the value of reading for L2learners’ lexical development. The combination of multiple-choiceglosses and input–output cycles interventions during reading notonly aided comprehension but also fostered word initialacquisition. Specifically, the use of multiple-choice glosses waseffective in the immediate assignment of meaning to new words.





Periodic text reconstruction in the L2 seemed less important forinitial assignment of meaning, but results suggest that this type ofactivity may be a promising avenue for promoting lexical retention.The positive effect of the interventions on lexical acquisition haddiminished five weeks later. That is, the hypothesized strong effectfor tasks that were expected to lead to elaboration and a deeperlevel of processing could not be definitively established. It ispossible that the elements of involvement load hypothesized byLaufer and Husltijn (2001) – search, evaluation and need – playsomewhat different roles in the process of acquiring new words.

Present findings also raise a number of questions for futureresearch. First, it may be that a sustained effort to draw learnerattention to the word–meaning connections is necessary, or at leasthelpful, in order to maintain initial gains in word knowledge. Inother words, the so-called parachute effect (Spada and Lightbown,1993) obtains in lexical as well as grammatical acquisition: anisolated encounter (often orchestrated by researchers), even if itcontains multiple exposures, may be insufficient to foster retentionif there is no follow-up. Secondly, the two interventions assessedin the current investigation should be re-examined with higherproficiency learners and with longer time on task. It may be thathigher proficiency learners would be better able to benefit fromthese techniques.8 Qualitative and introspective follow-upinvestigations into what learners actually do when they chooseamong glosses and what they notice during input–output cycles willprovide further insight into the value of these interventions forassigning meaning and strengthening the assigned word meaningfor long-term word gain. Although findings were based on a pre-and post-test design regarding word knowledge, the present studydid not control for subjects’ L2 reading and writing abilities. Inorder to gain a better understanding about the effect of the presentword learning intervention tasks, possible confounding variables,such as reading skills or general L2 proficiency, should beaccounted for through a standardized reading test in futureresearch.





Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express their appreciation and gratitude to theteaching staff in the Departments of German at the University ofIllinois at Chicago and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, without whose assistance this study would not havebeen possible.

Notes1 One of the authors has taught and or supervised classes at both institutions

and confirmed comparability of teaching approaches as well as fourth-semester students’ language level.

2 Ideally text suitability would have been determined by analysing the textwith a concordance and lexical profiling software. This procedure has beenused by several ESL studies (e.g., Zahar et al., 2001). To the researchers’knowledge such software is not available for German.

3 For example, a lower frequency word, such as bargain (verhandeln) wasreplaced by a higher frequency word, such as discuss (sprechen über). Anexample of an addition of a sentence is ‘[a]nd poor Klaus decided to stayin the village for the rest of the summer.’

4 Based on a pilot study the following changes were made on the VKS:Category I: the original VKS states ‘I don’t remember having seen this wordbefore.’ During the pilot study, students were confused. They asked whether‘before’ referred to the treatment or any time prior the treatment.Therefore, the word ‘before’ was taken out. Categories III and IV in theoriginal VKS make a distinction between whether students ‘think’ or ‘know’the meaning of the TW. In the pilot study, students voiced their uncertaintyabout the difference between these two options, claiming they could not becertain. Therefore, the current study provided only the ‘I think’ option.Category V of the original VKS assessed students’ productive wordknowledge with the following prompt ‘I can use this word in a sentence.’Again, during the pilot study, students indicated that they were insecureabout their productive abilities and opted not to write a sentence unlessthey were absolutely certain. Therefore, in the current study we formulateda more challenging prompt: ‘Try to use the word in a sentence.’

5 Current scoring was adjusted to accommodate the changes made to theVKS (see endnote 2). Scoring principles of the original VKS weremaintained.

6 Depth refers here to a receptive/ productive continuum and not to semanticdepth.

7 We refer to the control group as reading an ‘unenhanced’ text. However,since the target words each appear four times in this short text, thisfrequency can itself be considered an enhancement.

8 These findings were not replicated with a group of Spanish learners thatwere part of the original study. The considerable differences between thetwo student populations’ performance suggest cautious recommendations





for the use of the two interventions in instruction. For the learners ofSpanish, there was little benefit from the interventions in terms of eithertext comprehension or increased word knowledge. The glosses did not leadto higher comprehension scores than the control condition and the L2 textreconstruction task appeared to have a negative impact on textcomprehension. It seems clear from the low comprehension scores of theSpanish learners that proficiency is a crucial factor in the effectiveness ofthese interventions. When the readers were unable to comprehend muchof the text, the glosses were of little help, either in facilitating textcomprehension or lexical acquisition.

9 In the appendix, the TWs are bolded each time they appear. In the actualtreatment, they are only bolded in the first and fourth appearance. Inaddition, in the glossed conditions, there are seven distractor words, whichare glossed. These do not appear here.

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Appendix A

Shade for Sale

Once there lived a rich man named Hans in a small village. He built amansion next to a large maple. He spent each summer day sitting in itscool shade. One hot, summer day, a poor man, named Klaus, came alongthe road and saw the shady spot. He lay down and was almost asleepwhen Rich Hans yelled, ‘Hey! Get away from here! You can’t sleep there.Go on!’

‘Why can’t I sleep here? I am tired and the shade feels very good,’replied Poor Klaus. ‘I come from a village on the other side of themountain. It is too far to return tonight.’

‘This maple is mine. I take care of it. I give it water. I sit under it.Therefore the shade is mine too,’ said Rich Hans.

‘If this is true, why don’t you sell me the shade and you can keep themaple?’ suggested Poor Klaus. ‘I have a little money.’

Well, when Rich Hans heard the word, ‘money’, he became veryinterested. The two men discussed the price, and finally they came to aagreement. Each of them was very happy and Poor Klaus decided to stayin the village for the rest of the summer.

Everyday during that summer, Poor Klaus rested in the shade that heowned. Sometimes the shade fell across Rich Hans’s garden, so PoorKlaus rested there. Sometimes, however, the shade fell inside Rich Hans’sparlour, so Poor Klaus rested there.

In the beginning, Poor Klaus rested alone, but later, he began to bringhis friends and sometimes even their livestock. They often came into RichHans’s parlour and rested in the shade that Poor Klaus now owned. Thefriends lay down on the furniture and went to sleep. The chickens satunder the table, the cows sat in the corner of the room, and the pigs layin front of the sofa. Rich Hans became very angry. ‘You can’t you bringyour friends into my mansion! Don’t bring your livestock into my parlour.They will make a mess and eat my furniture! This is my mansion. Youhave no right to be here!’

Poor Klaus listened politely, but he reminded Rich Hans that he ownedthe shade. ‘I will follow the shade wherever it goes, even if it is insideyour mansion,’ said the Poor man.

What could Rich Hans do? He had sold the shade without thinkingabout the consequences.

Soon after this, when Rich Hans was having lunch with guests, PoorKlaus walked in with two friends and their livestock. They all lay downand soon were fast asleep. His friends were surprised to see livestock inthe parlour. Rich Hans explained to his friends about the agreement he





had made with Poor Klaus. They laughed and laughed and told Rich Hansthat he was very stupid. Rich Hans was so ashamed that he decided tomove to a new village, far, far away.

After Rich Hans left, Poor Klaus moved into the mansion, where helived happily for many years. And he always allowed anyone to rest inthe shade of his maple9.

Passage in German

Schatten zu Verkaufen

Einst lebte ein reicher Mann, Hans, in einem kleinen Kaff. Er baute eineVilla neben eine große Eiche. Im Sommer saß er jeden Tag in ihremSchatten. An einem besonders heißen Sommertag, kam ein armer Mann,Klaus, die Straße entlang und sah den schattigen Platz Er legte sich inden Schatten und war fast eingeschlafen, als der reiche Hans rief: “Hey,hau ab! Du kannst hier nicht schlafen. Geh weiter!”

“Warum kann ich hier nicht schlafen? Ich bin sehr müde und imSchatten kann ich mich ausruhen. Ich komme aus dem Kaff auf deranderen Seite des Berges und es ist zu weit, um zurückzulaufen”,antwortete der arme Klaus.

“Dies ist meine Eiche. Ich kümmere mich um sie. Ich gebe ihr Wasser.Ich sitzte unter ihr. Deshalb gehört mir auch ihr Schatten”, antworteteder reiche Hans.

“Also gut. Warum verkaufst du mir nicht den Schatten und behälst dieEiche”, sagte der arme Klaus. “Ich habe ein bißchen Geld.”

Als der reiche Hans das Wort ‘Geld’ hörte, wurde er neugierig. Diebeiden Männer sprachen über den Preis und einigten sich. Am Endewaren beide glücklich. Der arme Klaus wollte den ganzen Sommer imKaff bleiben.

Jeden Tag kam der arme Klaus und ruhte sich in dem Schatten, derihm gehörte, aus. Manchmal fiel der Schatten in den Garten des reichenHans, und so ruhte sich der arme Klaus dort aus. Manchmal fiel derSchatten in die Stube des reichen Hans, und so ruhte sich der arme Klausdort aus.

Anfänglich war der arme Klaus alleine, aber nach einiger Zeit brachteer Freunde und sogar deren Vieh mit. Oft kamen sie in die Stube desreichen Hans, um sich im Schatten des armen Klaus auszuruhen. DieFreunde legten sich auf das Sofa und schliefen. Die Hühner saßen unterdem Tisch, die Kühe standen in einer Ecke und die Schweine saßen vordem Sofa. Der reiche Hans wurde sehr wütend: “Du darfst deine Freundenicht in meine Stube mitbringen. Und bringt auch kein Vieh in meineVilla. Es macht alles schmutzig und frißt meine Möbel. Dies ist meine





Villa, und ihr habt kein Recht hier zu sein!”Der arme Klaus hörte höflich zu. Aber er erinnerte den reichen Hans

daran, daß der Schatten ihm gehöre. “Ich folge meinem Schattenwoauchimmer er hinfällt, sogar in deine Villa”, sagte der arme Klaus.

Was sollte der reiche Hans machen? Er hatte den Schatten verkauftohne an die Konsequenzen zu denken.

Bald darauf, als der reiche Hans mit guten Freunden zu Mittag aß, kamder arme Klaus mit zwei Freunden und deren Vieh in die Villa. Sie legtensich hin und schliefen. Die Freunde des reichen Hans waren überraschtVieh in der Stube zu sehen. Der reiche Hans erklärte seinen Freunden,daß der arme Klaus den Schatten gekauft hatte. Die Freunde lachten überden reichen Hans und sagten, daß er dumm sei. Der reiche Hans schämtesich sehr vor seinen Freunden und dachte daran in ein anderes Kaff zuziehen.

Nachdem der reiche Hans weggezogen war, zog der arme Klaus in dieVilla. Er lebte dort viele Jahre. Alle Leute durften sich im Schatten unterder Eiche ausruhen.

Appendix B

Word Recognition Test (WRT)

Please choose the correct meaning of the following words in boldface:

1) Einst lebte ein reicher Mann in einem kleinen Kaff.a) village b) shackc) valley d) don’t know

2) Er baute eine Villa neben eine grosse Eiche.a) river b) wall c) kind of tree d) don’t know

3) Manchmal fiel der Schatten in die Stube des reichen Hans, und soruhte sich der arme Klaus dort aus.a) driveway b) barn c) parlour d) don’t know





4) Anfänglich war der arme Mann alleine, aber nach einiger Zeit luder Freunde ein, und sogar deren Vieh.a) relatives b) livestock c) lice d) don’t know

Appendix C

Basic propositions in the input passage

(Names of characters are from English version.)

1. Rich man/Omar owns a tree.2. Poor man/Rubir tries to rest in shade of tree.3. Omar shoos Rubir away.4. Situation is resolved with sale of the shade.5. Rubir follows shade into house.6. Rubir brings friends into house.7. Rubir brings animals into house.8. Omar becomes angry.9. Omar has guests.

10. Rubir’s entourage interrupts dinner.11. Friends ridicule Omar.12. Omar is ashamed.13. Omar moves away.14. Rubir moves in.





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