Glosses are summaries of the meanings of words, usually found as notes in the margin or between the lines of a text.

Two students reading texts

Glosses can be interpretations, explanations or translations.

Example
Learners work together on a project to provide a gloss for a text on pub life in the UK, investigating the socio-cultural significance of the language in the text.

In the classroom
One interesting gloss exercise is to translate terms within a text into L1. If this is done in groups, then various communicative and analytical aims can be introduced.

Further links:

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/working-vocabulary

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/how-useful-are-comprehension-questions

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