Review of the Effect of Glosses on Vocabulary Learning and Reading Comprehension

Abstract

The present study reviews the results and findings of the previous studies on reading comprehension and vocabulary of ESL/EFL learners. The majority of the studies showed that L2 reading can help second language acquisition. Sometimes, many unfamiliar words are found in reading texts and students fail to notice all these unfamiliar words and understand the whole texts. Most of the studies have confirmed that glosses are very useful for vocabulary learning and reading comprehension. This paper reviewed the previous studies from a new view; whether textual glosses have significance in L2 reading comprehension or not. The implication of the researches, the limitation of the studies and the direction of the future research were discussed. The researcher found that there is no consistency in the results of the previous studies. Therefore, the researcher recommends more studies to explore which glosses are more effective in reading comprehension of ESL/EFL learners