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On The Benefits Of Multimodal Annotations For Vocabulary Uptake From Reading, Frank Boers, Paul Warren, Gina Grimshaw, Anna Siyanova-Chanturia

Education Publications

Several research articles published in the realm of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) have reported evidence of the benefits of multimodal annotations, i.e., the provision of pictorial as well as verbal clarifications, for vocabulary uptake from reading. Almost invariably, these publications account for the observed benefits with reference to Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory, suggesting it is the visual illustration of word meaning that enhances the quality of processing and hence makes new words more memorable. In this discussion article, we explore the possibility that it is not necessarily the multimodality per se that accounts for the reported benefits. Instead, …