Hypermedia annotation presentation: The effect of location and type on the EFL learners’ achievement in reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition

This study investigated the effect of gloss presentation in different text locations whilst participants read EFL texts in a hypermedia environment. Seventy-eight undergraduate EFL learners read and summarized seven texts and completed a vocabulary assessment. The number of propositions recalled in each summary was recorded. The data suggest that reading passages with hypermedia annotations significantly benefits passage comprehension and vocabulary (compared to reading passages with no annotations). The best performance was observed in the condition where glosses were placed after the glossed word. The study also reported large observed score mean differences for the definition gloss type of 3–5-words.