Incidental Vocabulary Learning Through Reading : Guessing Exercises, Glossing or Accessing Dictionaries?

Abstract

Japanese intermediate students of English read an English short story in one of the four text reading conditions: Guessing exercises (provision of gussing unknown words as a pre-reading activity), Marginal Glosses (provision of L1 translations of unknown words), Dictionary (accessing a bilingual dictionary), and Control. The results found that learners in gussing pre-reading activity and marginal glossing groups outperformed their peers on the form-meaning connection tasks administered immediately after they had read the text. Furthermore, this difference didn't disappear on the retest two weeks later. This article ends with recommendations for effective ways of teaching vocabulary through reading.