Incidental Vocabulary Learning and the Development of Receptive and Productive Vocabulary: How Gloss Types Work

Evidences exist that language learners can benefit from the incidental prou.ss of language learning in different ways. The present study tries to investigate the effects of incidental vocabulary learning in the form of different gloss types (L1 and L2) through the application of State Rating Tasks, which show the change of state of vocabulary knowledge in learners. Also this study attempts to shed more light on the relationship between the incidental vocabulary learning through the form of gloss types and development of Receptive and Productive vocabulary knowledge among learners. The participants were presented a list of twenty L1 and L2 glosses and they were required to read the passage by the use of these glosses. One version of State Rating Tasks was administered among participants in two data times, one before and one after the treatment, to show the change of state in participants' knowledge. The findings show that incidental learning of vocabulary by the application of gloss types increases participants' knowledge states from lower states to higher, but regarding the type of glosses, this change varies. The analysis of SRT shows that participants received L1 gloss type outperformed the other group with respect to the Productive vocabulary knowledge, while L2 gloss type was more beneficial for increasing Receptive vocabulary knowledge.