The Effect of Input Enhancement and L1 Glosses on the Acquisition of English Phrasal Verbs

This within‐subjects study investigated the effectiveness of input enhancement (IE) and native language (L1) glossing on second language (L2) learners’ receptive acquisition of English phrasal verbs (PVs) through reading. Sixty‐four ESL students read three short restaurant reviews under three different conditions: one with the target items written in red (IE treatment), one with the target items written in red and glossed in the margin (IE + L1 glossing treatment), and a control text with the target items printed in normal black color without glossing. All students practiced the same 15 target PVs. However, the PVs were divided into three equivalent groups (A, B, C) of five PVs each, and participants practiced each group of PVs under one of the three randomized treatment conditions. Afterward, the learners’ receptive knowledge of PVs was measured by a multiple‐choice posttest. A repeated measures ANOVA test revealed that students’ scores in both experimental conditions were significantly higher than the scores in the control condition. The findings also showed that the IE + L1 glossing condition produced better learning than the IE condition alone. These results provide additional evidence for the support of marginal glosses for vocabulary acquisition and therefore have several important implications for L2 instructors, learners, curriculum developers, and future researchers.