The Incidental Learning of L2 Chinese Vocabulary through Reading

Abstract

The study investigated the effect of marginal glossing and frequency of occurrence on the incidental learning of six aspects of vocabulary knowledge through reading in the second language (L2) Chinese. Participants were 30 intermediate L2 Chinese learners in an American public university. The MACOVA tests indicated that the treatment group who read with marginal glossing significantly outperformed (F = 6.686, p < 0.01) the control group who did not read with marginal glossing on six aspects of vocabulary knowledge after reading two stories. Significant differences were found on receptive word form, productive word form, receptive word meaning, and productive word grammatical function. The two-way ANOVA test suggested that the treatment group performed consistently better on learning words repeated three times and one time, and there was no interaction between the groups and the frequency of occurrence the words. The findings indicated that reading interesting and comprehensible Chinese stories can be beneficial for the learning of Chinese words.