Applicability of technology-enhanced visual glosses for explicit L2 vocabulary learning: The enhancement of metaphoric competence through the learning of English polysemous words

• Examination of the efficacy of animated schematic image as visual gloss for explicit L2 vocabulary learning.
• Based on the hypothesis that the animated schematic images could facilitate better L2 text comprehension and production.
• No difference in learning effect between pictorial glosses and animated glosses in the text comprehension.
• Higher accuracy rate of the text compression with over, the most polysemous word in the target words.
• Significant difference was observed in producing sentences with metaphorical senses of the target words.

This study examines the efficacy of technology-enhanced visual glosses in explicit L2 vocabulary learning based on the concept of the image schema, which is a mental pattern of our bodily experiences. Although our previous studies could not confirm the advantage of the animated visual glosses for acquiring English prepositions, this study reexamines the learning effect of the animated glosses; we assume that the animation, could enhance learners' comprehension and production of the target prepositions (especially in their metaphorical sense). The findings suggest that the animated visual glosses were only effect in certain scenarios. More specifically, the animated image schema was more a more effective gloss for students to produce metaphorical prepositions than for them to select the correct word in receptive tests. Thus this study therefore shows that when examining technology for L2 learning, more analysis of the features of the target L2 knowledge should be made.