The aim of this experiment was to investigate how glossing influences second language (L2)reading comprehension in relation to text difficulty and the two local and global meaning representations. Fifty-eight undergraduate students were asked to read three easy, moderate, and difficult texts and, following each passage, answer twenty comprehension questions targeting local and global concepts in one of the two first-language-glossed and unglossed conditions. Half of the participants in each group were supposed to think aloud while reading. The results revealed a significant difference between the performance of glossed and unglossed groups on comprehension of local concepts in all three difficulty levels. However, the impact of glossing on comprehension of global concepts was significantly influenced by text difficulty. The qualitative analysis of think-aloud protocols suggested a substantial difference in glossing functionality on fluency between the easy and the difficult texts. Furthermore, it is suggested that revisiting the glossing effect in combination with text difficulty on the reading product and underlying processes might reconcile some divergent hypotheses on glossing impact on fluency.

本实验的目的是研究在文本难度以及两种局部和全局含义表示方面，词汇表对第二语言 (L2) 阅读理解的影响。58 名本科生被要求阅读三篇简单、中等和困难的文本，并在每篇文章之后，在两种第一语言有修饰和无修饰的条件之一下回答针对本地和全球概念的二十个理解问题。每组一半的参与者应该在阅读时大声思考。结果显示，在所有三个难度级别中，在理解本地概念方面，已使用术语和未使用术语的组的表现之间存在显着差异。然而，解释对全球概念理解的影响受到文本难度的显着影响。对大声思考协议的定性分析表明，在简单和困难文本之间的流畅性的修饰功能方面存在显着差异。此外，建议重新审视润色效果与阅读产品和底层过程的文本难度相结合，可能会调和一些关于润色对流畅度影响的不同假设。