Effects of Multimedia Annotations on Thai EFL Readers’ Words and Text Recall

This study aimed to investigate the effects of using multimedia annotations on EFL readers’ word recall and text recall and to explore which type of multimedia annotations – L1 meaning, L2 meaning, sound, and image – would have a better effect on their recall of new words and text comprehension. The participants were 78 students who enrolled in an Intermediate EFL course at a university in the north of Thailand. Five instruments – a questionnaire, a vocabulary pre-test, a computerized log-file, and two posttests- a vocabulary test and a text recall test – were used to collect data. First, the participants responded to the questionnaire and the pre-test in the classroom. One week later, they read a hypertext equipped with multimedia annotations in the computer laboratory while the log files recorded their selections of words and annotations. Immediately after that, they answered the two post-tests. Three weeks later, a vocabulary test was given to the participants again without informing in advanced. The results revealed that (1) accessing multimedia annotations led to significantly greater vocabulary recall (42%) among Thai EFL learners; (2) their retention lasted at least three weeks after being exposed to the multimedia-annotated text; (3) they recalled words with images significantly better than those with no images; (4) they recalled about 31% of the text with multimedia annotations; and (5) no significant difference was found regarding the effects of using different types of multimedia annotations on learners’ word recall and text recall when compared between learners.