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The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of three different screen sizes (small, medium and large) and two types of multimedia instruction (text only and text with pictorial annotation) on vocabulary learning. One hundred thirty-five Korean middle school students learning English as a foreign language were randomly distributed into six groups and were given a pretest, a self-study multimedia instruction, a posttest and a retention test online. The pretest, posttest and retention test were identical and included 30 vocabulary questions. Results show that the large screen multimedia instruction helped the students to learn English vocabulary more effectively than the small screen instruction as demonstrated on both the posttest and retention test. However, there was little difference in vocabulary learning between the text-only and text-with-pictorial annotation instructions. Although visual perception can be influenced by each learner's expectations and knowledge, using a smaller screen for instruction causes more challenges for learners to perceive and comprehend vocabulary learning. IntroductionTwo-year-old Jonah watches his favourite movie, Dinosaur, on an 80-gig iPod in his living room. It is not surprising to see young children using small portable devices and even electronic toys as learning tools. Older children often view their favourite digital content (eg, movies, TV shows, news, books) on computers, iPods, e-book readers or cell phones. Students spend hours reading emails, blogs, text messages, news and reports. They even use various digital devices to complete school projects. Moreover, many newer portable devices enable their owners to view and create digital content online. Hearther (2008) notes that 'reading doesn't have to involve cover-to-cover, word-for-word activity ' (p. 34). This reading trend requires educators and instructional material developers to change the way they use electronic content to teach young students. Such content often embraces text and graphics but also makes use of multimodal features including multimedia and hyperlinks (Larson, 2008). Many educators believe that all of these features should be taken into consideration when working with technology-based education.

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