Learner Interactions With and Affective Views of Gloss Presentations in CALL Reading

Abstract

This study investigates ESL learners’ preferences and opinions of two gloss types and their actual effort to read the glosses to understand the text. Particularly, in an online reading text, glosses were provided by either/both clicking or/and hovering the text. In addition, it was also investigated whether learner variables such as gender, native language and proficiency level relate to learners’ preference of particular type of gloss presentation. The analysis of learner’s actual references to gloss as well as survey on their perception revealed that learners’ showed no patterned significant preference of one gloss presentation over the other. From the survey, the number of glosses that they would read would be approximately the same whichever presentation was chosen, and the time they would spend reading the texts would not differ. Finally, no individual differences seemed to be related to learners’ preference of gloss type.