This study investigated the effects of visible and invisible links for annotated words in a computer module for learning French on the vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension of two types of students – high – and average-achievers. Two hundred and sixty four second-semester students of French were identified as high- or average-achievers. Each type of students was then randomly assigned to two groups – with visible or invisible hyperlinks. All students were instructed to read a short passage in French (181 words) for general comprehension and allowed to consult the annotated words (made visible by bold face for the visible links group) as much as they needed. The students took a vocabulary pretest and an immediate and delayed (two weeks) vocabulary and reading comprehension posttest. The results of the study showed that average- achievers benefited more from the visible links for vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension than high-achievers. The results are discussed in light of second language acquisition and gifted-student theories and suggestions for future research are made

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This article examines the use of two different Spanish language learning tasks for students identified as high ability and average ability. Students were asked to read a short passage in Spanish on a computer screen and either use the glosses already provided for certain words to aid in comprehension (the control group) or create glosses for the same target words using a Spanish-English dictionary and annotation software (the experimental group). Next, they were asked to write a synopsis of the story in their own words in English and were also given an unannounced vocabulary recall test. They were retested 1 month later for vocabulary recall. High-ability students performed significantly better with the experimental task than with the control task on the vocabulary test, while average-ability learners showed no difference for recall between the two tasks. For reading comprehension, the complex nature of the experimental task seems to have created difficulties for average-ability learners, who scored substantially lower than the other groupings. Experimental average-ability students recalled significantly fewer words on the delayed recall test, as well, again suggesting a detrimental effect of the task on word retention for this group.

This study compares the attitude toward instruction of two groups of participants: control subjects who used a multimedia instructional module for French created by the researcher, and experimental subjects who created their own module. Quantitative data did not yield statistically significant differences in their attitudes. In the light of additional qualitative data, possible reasons for this result are discussed: high level of satisfaction with the novelty of instruction for both groups; computer problems, lack of adequate orientation, lack of real outlet for the module and difficulty of the texts for the experimental group. Included are conclusions and recommendations for further research.

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