Vocabulary Instruction through Hypertext: Are There Advantages Over Conventional Methods of Teaching? Shira Koren Bar Ilan University, Israel <korens@mail.biu.ac.il> Abstract

The study tests the retention of two types of words, (a) words that have to be inferred and (b) words glossed in a text in TEXTFUN, an interactive program on the Internet for the practice of reading skills for academic purposes. The results show that retention of the inferred words was much higher than that of the glossed words. This study confirmed theories that the retention of inferred words is higher than the retention of words where the meaning is given, and that incidental vocabulary learning is not particularly efficient. The conclusion of the study is that even an attractive computer program cannot help much in the incidental learning of words.

Keywords: ESL, EFL, vocabulary, CALL