Investigating the Effect of Adding Pictures to Glosses on Iranian EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Learning and Reading Comprehension

This study aimed to examine the effect of adding pictures to glosses on vocabulary learning andreading comprehension of Iranian high school EFL learners. To this end, ۹۰ high school studentsstudying at a high school were selected. They were assigned to two experimental groups (textual glossand pictorial-textual gloss) and a control group. The participants in each group read a passage in ۱۵minutes. Then, a reading comprehension test was given to them for ۱۰ minutes. After taking thereading comprehension test, the participants were given recall and recognition vocabulary tests. Theresults of one-way ANOVAs showed that both experimental groups outperformed the control group invocabulary learning and reading comprehension tests. However, there were no significant differencesbetween the pictorial-textual and textual gloss groups in reading comprehension test. Furthermore, theresults indicated that the performance of pictorial-textual gloss group was better in vocabulary tests.The findings of the study have pedagogical and theoretical implications for EFL learners and teachers.

Keywords:

gloss , pictorial gloss , textual gloss , reading comprehension , recall , recognition