L1 vs L2 in Multimedia Glosses

With the development of computation technology and popularization mobile device, it has been a common practice for people to read on a screen. The importance of multimedia annotation is increasingly popular in foreign language learning. This week we examine the website Quitzlet, which is commonly used for vocabulary learning. There are several studies demonstrating the significant effectiveness of multimedia annotation which leads to the increasing use of online multimedia glosses. This creates the potential possibilities for both students and teachers to adopt multimedia glosses to facilitate their learning and teaching.

Traditionally, the glosses in a reading material are short definitions or notes to assisted reader in better comprehending the text or facilitating reading progress. For second language learners, annotation is one of the most common ways to learn vocabulary. In multimedia Glosses, the definitions of words are demonstrated by a combination of various modalities (textual, audial and visual).

Learners can choose whatever language they like to in Quitzlet. Therefore, there is a need to explore the different effect of the different presentation namely L1 annotation and L2 annotation. Yoshii (2006) conduct a research to examine the effect of the L1 and L2 glosses annotations in incidental vocabulary learning. 195 participants were divided into four groups: (1) L1 text only; (2) L2 text only; (3) L1 text plus picture; and (4) L2 text plus picture. They were asked to take a pretest a week before the treatment. Later, they were instructed to read a 390-words story with 14 targets words and 10 distractors followed by one immediate posttest and the other posttest was two week later. The study shows no significant differences between L2 glosses and L1 glosses. However, the study also suggested that individual differences might involve in the learning results.