Multimedia glosses and their impact on second language vocabulary acquisition: insights from a meta-analysis and document co-citation analysis

ABSTRACT

Multimedia glosses have been examined extensively by researchers for over three decades to determine their possible effects in second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. Many meta-analytic studies aimed to determine the extent to which glosses can impact L2 vocabulary learning and the moderators that can mediate the results of meta-analytic studies. This study integrated meta-analytic studies with document co-citation analysis (DCA) to elicit a fine-grained view of the thematic associations of relevant citing studies with the issue of glosses and L2 vocabulary learning. To address this issue, 18 target studies (N = 2991 participants) were selected as the study sample. Results revealed that glosses had an overall large effect size on L2 vocabulary acquisition (Hedge’s g = 1.27); however, the effect size varied from small to large, depending on the level of proficiency of the learners. Concerning the tests type moderator, the effect size was large for recognition test but medium for vocabulary recall test. Results of the DCA (18 cited articles and 802 citing articles) identified 10 core papers, with highly significant co-citations, and 257 citing references, indicating the highly thematic relatedness of the target studies, and citing references to the issue under investigation.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-citation analysis
• glosses
• meta-analysis
• multimedia
• vocabulary acquisition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are thankful to the Deanship of Scientific Research at Najran University for funding this work under the Distinguished Research Funding Program grant number code (NU/RG/SEHRC/12/7).

Notes on contributors

Mohammed Ali Mohsen

Mohammed Ali Mohsen is a professor of applied linguistics at the Department of English, Najran University, Saudi Arabia. His main research interests include CALL, vocabulary acquisition, L2 writing, cognitive processes, and scientometrics. His articles appeared in top-tier international journals including Computers & Education, Computer Assisted Language Learning, British Journal of Educational Technology, ReCALL, Language Teaching Research, Journal of Educational Computing Research, Interactive Learning Environments and Journal of Computing in Higher Education.

Hassan Saleh Mahdi

Hassan Saleh Mahdi is an assistant professor at the Department of English, Hodeida University, Yemen. His research interests include Second Language Acquisition (SLA), Computer-assisted language learning (CALL), Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL), and vocabulary acquisition. He has published several papers in many international journals such as Interactive Learning Environments, Journal of Educational Computing Research, Journal of Computing in Higher Education, and Journal of Psycholinguistics Research.

Reem Alkhammash

Reem Alkhammash is an associate professor of linguistics at Taif University. She is also the director of the English Language Centre. She obtained her PhD from Queen Mary University of London in Linguistics. Her work was published in reputable journals such as Discourse & Communication and other international peer-reviewed journals such as GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies and Training, Language and Culture among many others. She also acts as a reviewer for several journals such as Cognitive Linguistic Studies and Journal of Research in Language and Translation.