The Effect of Retrieval Practice in Primary School Vocabulary Learning

Abstract

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.

A Comparative Study of the Effects of Different Glossing Conditions on EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Recall

“…These findings support the claim that retrieval can play a positive role in enhancing vocabulary learning (Goossens et al, 2014). Moreover, the glossretrieval-gloss-retrieval condition's significant mean difference with the gloss-retrieval-gloss condition in the form recall test would be related to additional reviewing of the target items (Rott, 2007).…”

“…These studies have supported the effectiveness of textual glosses in facilitating L2 vocabulary learning. Moreover, most studies have investigated the role of different factors such as repeating target words in the text (Peters, 2014;Rott, 2007) and promoting vocabulary recall (Goossens et al, 2014;Nowzan & Baryaji, 2013;Rott, 2007) on L2 vocabulary learning; however, the role of combining such interventions has been little examined so far (Huang & Lin, 2014). The present study, therefore, aimed to fill this gap in the literature by combining inference, retrieval, and glosses together in vocabulary learning and examining the effects of such glossing conditions on vocabulary recall.…”

Not New, but Nearly Forgotten: the Testing Effect Decreases or even Disappears as the Complexity of Learning Materials Increases

“…Their participants were elementary school children (an under-investigated population in testing effect research; for exceptions, see, e.g., Bouwmeester and Verkoeijen 2011;Goossens et al 2014;Karpicke et al 2014a), who either studied worked examples on reading bus timetables or alternately studied an example and solved a practice test problem. Experiments 1 and 2 showed no testing effect on an immediate test with the group that only studied examples outperforming the example-problem group.…”

The benefit of retrieval practice over elaborative restudy in primary school vocabulary learning

“…Yet, this is uncommon in classroom practice, which is characterized by children learning new words and their definitions in a meaningful context (e.g., Fuchs et al, 2003;Janssen & Van Ooijen, 2012; Van de Gein, Van de Guchte, & Kouwenberg, 2008). In the present study, we addressed this problem by examining whether retrieval practice benefits primary school vocabulary learning under conditions that mimic real-life vocabulary teaching more than the conditions in the studies of Metcalfe et al (2007) and Goossens et al (2014). One important feature of real-life vocabulary teaching is that children get acquainted with new words through a separate introductory learning session, which helps children focus on the word forms and word meanings.…”