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Summary: The testing effect refers to the finding that retrieval practice leads to better long-term retention than additional study of course material. In the present study, we examined whether this finding generalizes to primary school vocabulary learning. We also manipulated the word learning context. Children were introduced to 20 words by listening to a story in which novel words were embedded (story condition) or by listening to isolated words (word pairs condition). The children practised the meaning of 10 words by retrieval practice and 10 words by restudy. After 1 week, they completed a cued recall test and a multiple choice test. Words learned by retrieval practice were recalled better than words learned by additional study, but there was no difference in recognition. Furthermore, the children in the word pairs condition outperformed the children in the story condition. These results show that retrieval practice may improve vocabulary learning in children.

SummaryDistributed practice and retrieval practice are promising learning strategies to use in education. We examined the effects of these strategies in primary school vocabulary lessons. Grades 2, 3, 4, and 6 children performed exercises that were part of the regular curriculum. For the distributed practice manipulation, the children performed six exercises distributed within 1 week (short‐lag repetition) or across 2 weeks (long‐lag repetition). For the repetition type manipulation, children copied a part of the description of a word (restudy) or recalled the description (retrieval practice). At the end of each week, the children received a cued‐recall vocabulary test. After 1 to 11 weeks they received a multiple‐choice vocabulary test. Both on the cued‐recall test and on the multiple‐choice test no benefits of long‐lag repetition and retrieval practice were found. These results put into question the practical value of long‐lag repetition and retrieval practice in real‐life primary school vocabulary lessons.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

a b s t r a c tThe testing effect is the phenomenon that retrieval practice of learning material after studying enhances long-term retention more than restudying. We examined retrieval practice in primary school vocabulary learning in two experiments. Nine-year-old children studied word definitions and completed exercises according to three learning conditions: pure restudy, elaborative restudy or retrieval practice. Children in the pure restudy condition reread and partly copied the definitions. In the elaborative restudy condition children reread the definitions and connected semantically related words to the target words. Children in the retrieval practice condition recalled the words based on their definitions. Overall, on the fill-inthe-blank test after one week children in the retrieval practice condition outperformed children in the other conditions, but on the multiple-choice test there were no differences. Retrieval practice may be effective for primary school vocabulary learning, but there is uncertainty about the practical value and the magnitude of the retrieval practice effect.

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How much of the vocabulary in a text needs to be known ('text coverage') to arrive at a proper comprehension of the text? On the basis of a vocabulary test, 175 pupils of grade 4 were divided into four groups with different vocabulary sizes. Next, in three sessions they read six texts differing in word-level difficulty. Each time after they had read a text, the children answered questions about it and their knowledge of unknown words from the text was tested. The results show that text comprehension and word learning is dependent on the word-level difficulty of the text: the more difficult words there were in the texts, the less well the children understood the texts, and the fewer words they learned from them. Children with a smaller vocabulary learned fewer words and understood less than the children with larger vocabularies. Optimum text coverage was reached at a level of 88.7 percent, with the children answering correctly more than half of the text comprehension questions, and having learned at least one out of five unknown words from the text.

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