Pergamon .Sj~rem, Vol. 24. No. 4, pp. 503-519, 1996 Copyright 0 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd zyxwvut PII: SO346-251X(96)00038-3 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0346-251X/96 Pl5.00 + 0.00 FACILITATING READINGCOMPREHENSION WITH MULTIMEDIA DOROTHYM. CHUN*$ and JAN L. PLASS-f *Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies and tOf$ce of instructional Consultation, University of California at Santa Barbara, Department of Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies, SantaBarbara, CA 93106-4130, U.S.A. Basedon recent theories of the L2 reading process that have focused on an interactive approach, i.e. the utilizationof both top-down and bottom-up processing, this paper is concerned with the question of how reading compre- hension can be facilitated with a multimedia application for language learn- ing. On the macro level,the effect of a dynamic visualadvance organizer is investigated. On the micro level, the effects of multimedia annotations for single vocabulary itemsare studied. In addition,the relationship between vocabu- lary acquisition and reading comprehension is examined. To test our hypo- theses threestudies with a total of 160 students were conducted using the multimedia application CyberBuch. The results indicate that a dynamic visual advance organizer doesaid in overall comprehension and that annotations of individual vocabulary items consisting of both visualand verbalinformation help more thanverbal information only. Also, a moderate correlation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension was found. Theseresults support the dual codingtheoryand its extension to multimedia learning and underline the importance of visual information in addition to verbal informa- tion to support both top-down and bottom-up processing in readingin a foreign language. Copyright 0 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd INTRODUCTION Recentmodelsof the L2 reading process have focused on an interactive approach, i.e. that proficient readers utilizeboth bottom-upand top-down processing, and that suc- cessful comprehension is the resultof an interaction between both types of processing (cf. Silberstein, 1987; Swaffar et al., 1991; Coady, 1993). The theories of L2 reading com- prehension that emphasize the integration of both processes provided the rationale for the development and testing of CyberBuch, a multimedia application thatprovides students reading German texts with (a) at the macro-level, a visual advance organizer to facilitate globalcomprehension in the form of a video clip; and (b) at the micro-level, a variety of annotations for individual wordsin the form of text, graphics, video and sound.In this fAuthor to whomcorrespondence whould bc addressed (email: dchun@humanitas.usb.edu). 503