Multimedia enhanced vocabulary learning: The role of input condition and learner-related factors

This study explored the effects of different types of input (verbal-only vs. verbal plus content-related nonverbal vs. verbal plus paralinguistic-related nonverbal) on vocabulary learning from multimedia. It also investigated how learning was moderated by three learner-related factors (prior vocabulary size, phonological short-term memory (PSTM) capacity, and comprehension of the input). Forty-three English learners of French first completed a French vocabulary size test, a vocabulary pre-test, and a PSTM test online. They then viewed three sets of multimodal teaching materials, each with a different type of input condition, followed by a vocabulary post-test and a comprehension test. Findings indicated that multimodal input including additional nonverbal information was more beneficial than traditional verbal-only input for productive vocabulary knowledge gains. Additionally, comprehension of the input was the most important moderator for the learning gains, especially when the input included paralinguistic-related nonverbal information. The findings provide novel insights into theories of multimedia learning and have pedagogical implications for the design of multimodal language learning materials.