L2 Incidental Vocabulary Learning From Gloss: Task-Induced Involvement Load and Contextual Specificity

Abstract

　　No unanimous conclusions have been reached on the effect of the amount of contextual informativeness on incidental vocabulary learning. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of gloss type and contextual specificity on vocabulary learning. Target words were glossed in one of three contexts: (a) misdirective, (b) nondirective, and (c) directive. They were given either single glosses, which provide one meaning, or multiple-choice glosses, wherein readers infer the meaning from several options. The results show that regardless of contextual specificity, lexical form-meaning connections were established when deeply involved in the targets in the decontextualized test, and that contextual specificity affected partial lexical development. The effects of contextual specificity and glosses on vocabulary learning are discussed in terms of the learner’s attention resources. The study findings suggest that vocabulary instruction with a teacher’s episodic talk is effective to the extent that it does not deplete the students’ cognitive resources.