Cooperating Triangle? Incidental Learning Gloss Types and Motivation

Abstract

Lexical competence is one of the core elements of communicative competence (Coady & Huckin, 1997). The present study is an attempt to investigate the role of two types of glosses and their influences on lexical competence, especially their relationships with incidental vocabulary learning. In addition, this study tries to examine the influence of motivation and its effect on/or relationship to incidental vocabulary acquisition. Fifty-eight university students of English as a foreign language took part in this study. A list of twenty L1 and L2 glosses, were administered among the participants and they were required to read the passage by the help of these glosses. After each session of treatment, a version of State Rating Task was used to show the participants’ change of cognitive state. After the last session of treatment, participants were required to fill out a motivation questionnaire to find the relationship between incidental vocabulary learning and their motivation. The findings indicate that incidental process of learning vocabulary in the form of glosses have contribution to a change in participants’ cognitive state, but regarding the type of glosses, this contribution varies. The analysis of motivation questionnaire showed that learners involved in incidental vocabulary learning were instrumentally motivated.