Earlier meta-analyses, as reported second-hand, find that glosses improve L2 vocabulary learning and that text-and-picture glosses outperform single-mode glosses¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · quant-synthesis r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2025 · 1 of 2 entries checked against their sources (automated) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q2 i? Meta-analyses report positive gloss effects on L2 vocabulary learning with medium to large effect sizes. → A. Pradheepa 2025 q2 i? Combined text-and-graphics glosses are more effective than single-mode glosses; effectiveness varies with proficiency, text type, and assessment task. → A. Pradheepa 2025 (2)

Evidence¶

A. Pradheepa 2025¶

A. Pradheepa, K. Gurusamy & T. Pushpanathan. (2025). The role of language games in enhancing vocabulary acquisition: A meta-analysis. Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.29140/ajal.v8n1.2073

q2 · i? · quant-synthesis · r2

The review reports, citing Abraham (2008), Vahedi et al. (2016), and Mohsen et al. (2023), that meta-analyses establish positive gloss effects with medium to large effect sizes; specific values are not printed in the text provided.

"meta-analyses have established positive effects of glosses on L2 vocabulary learning with medium to large effect sizes described"

A. Pradheepa 2025 (2)¶

q2 · i? · quant-synthesis · r2

The review reports, citing Vahedi et al. (2016), that multiple glosses combining text and graphics beat single-mode glosses, and notes moderators including proficiency level, text type, and assessment format, with recognition tests yielding larger effects than recall tests.

"including both text meanings and illustrations of words is more effective for increasing the size of the reader’s vocabulary than using only one type of gloss"

Studies bearing on this claim¶

Do glosses and look-up helps beside second-language material help learners learn its words and understand it, and for whom? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 7 narrower claims that bear on it: 3 distinct studies (1 quant-synthesis, 1 causal, 1 review), q2–q3, 0 of 3 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Study	Design	Effect as recorded	Bears on this claim through
A. Pradheepa 2025	q2 · quant-synthesis · r2	i?	this claim
Cheng 2009	q2 / q3 · causal · r2	i?	Only L1-gloss-L2-ex and L1-in-text-gloss conditions significantly outperform the no-gloss (supports); Proficiency moderates gloss effects: vocabulary benefits appear at Levels 2 and 3 but not (qualifies); Learners hold positive attitudes toward glosses, but their perceptions of which gloss type (qualifies); All three L1 gloss conditions significantly improve immediate vocabulary recall over a no- (supports); L1 glosses do not significantly improve EFL reading comprehension compared with no glosses (qualifies)
Restrepo Ramos 2015	q2 / q3 · review · r2	i?	Marginal glosses, dictionary use, and repeated occurrence of unknown words each positively (supports); Tasks with higher involvement load, involving search and evaluation, are conducive to bett (supports)

Discussion¶

The evidence recorded here is second-hand. Both entries are background statements in a meta-analysis of language games (Pradheepa et al. 2025), citing the gloss meta-analyses of Abraham (2008), Vahedi et al. (2016) and Mohsen et al. (2023); those meta-analyses are not themselves recorded on this page, and no effect size is printed here, so "medium-to-large" rests on that description. The one primary gloss study in the wiki, Cheng and Good (2009), bears on the narrower claims listed below.

Adventure video games with supplementary vocabulary material outperform control conditions on receptive and productive vocabulary tests — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
Combining textual and pictorial glosses improves incidental vocabulary learning more than single-mode glosses — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
Marginal glosses, dictionary use, and repeated occurrence of unknown words each positively affect incidental vocabulary learning — related
Multimedia glosses improve EFL students' vocabulary retention two weeks after treatment relative to no glosses — related
Multimedia glosses improve EFL students' immediate vocabulary acquisition relative to reading the same texts without glosses — related
Proficiency moderates gloss effects: vocabulary benefits appear at Levels 2 and 3 but not Levels 1 and 4 — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
Hyper-reference dictionary users consulted vocabulary twice as often as paper-dictionary users, though comprehension did not differ significantly — related
A multiple-choice gloss format (L1 + L2) produced significantly higher vocabulary posttest scores than a single-gloss format in Nagata's Japanese study — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
In Yoshii's study, text + picture glosses beat text-only glosses only on a definition-supply test, with no L1 versus L2 gloss difference — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
In Chun and Plass's CyberBuch studies, the text + picture annotation group significantly outperformed text-definition and text + video groups on a vocabulary test — related
L1 glosses do not significantly improve EFL reading comprehension compared with no glosses — related
Captioning second-language videos produces large benefits for comprehension and vocabulary acquisition — related
A second-order synthesis of 12 CALL meta-analyses yields a mean effect size of d=.64, a medium effect of CALL on learning — related

Page metadata

Field	Value
`type`	`claim`
`id`	`glossing-medium-large-effects-l2-vocabulary`
`title`	`Earlier meta-analyses, as reported second-hand, find that glosses improve L2 vocabulary learning and that text-and-picture glosses outperform single-mode glosses`
`description`	`Earlier meta-analyses, as reported second-hand, find that glosses improve L2 vocabulary learning and that text-and-picture glosses outperform single-mode glosses`
`status`	`review`
`evidence_strength`	`moderate`
`newest_evidence`	`2025`
`generated`	by `process:wiki-ingest` on `2026-09-27`
`trust`	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
`sources`	2 — `a-pradheepa-2025`, `a-pradheepa-2025-2`

Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.