Elham Pourrasa - Shiraz university, shiraz, iran
Mahboobeh Saadat - Shiraz university, shiraz, iran

Glosses can be helpful in several respects. When students are engaged in reading, their attention to new words by the gloss and their knowledge of the unknown words is enhanced by the rich context in the reading material. In addition, presence of glosses can alleviate the burden of dictionary consultation on students’ shoulders and prevent them from making wrong inferences or assigning an inappropriate meaning to the unknown words in the particular context. The two important reasons to use glosses are to aid reading comprehension and vocabulary learning (Ko, 2005). The present study intended to investigate how different types of gloss (SL1G and SL2G) affect Iranian EFL learners’ short-term and long-term incidental vocabulary learning in literary and journalistic texts. To this end, two texts--one literary text and the other a journalistic one from Reader's choice (Baudoin, et. al., 1977) --were selected and glossed once in L1 and the other time in L2. A total of 60 freshmen (males and females) at the same L2 level studying English Language and Literature in Shiraz University and Shiraz Azad University, were divided into two groups. First, each group read the literary text under one of the two conditions: Persian gloss (L1 glossing), and English gloss (L2 glossing). Having read the text, they were asked to answer an immediate productive vocabulary test constructed based on the text. Also, the same procedure was followed with the journalistic text. Two weeks later a delayed vocabulary posttest was conducted on each text. Furthermore, the participants were required to answer a questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed utilizing independent t-tests and paired t-tests. The findings revealed no significant difference between SL1G and SL2G concerning their effects on short-term and long-term incidental vocabulary learning in the literary text. In contrast, in the journalistic text, there was a significant difference between gloss types (SL1G and SL2G) in short-term vocabulary learning, but not in long-term vocabulary retention. In effect, SL1G was more facilitative than SL2G in the short-term vocabulary learning in the journalistic text. When surveyed, learners showed their preference for L2 glosses (71%) in the margin (98%). Also, about 62% of the learners favoured glosses in university textbooks, 25% in journalistic texts, and 13% in literary texts

L2 vocabulary learning, incidental vocabulary learning, glossing, L1 and L2 glosses, literary text, journalistic text