THE EFFECTS OF INFERRING, VERIFYING, AND MEMORIZING ON THE RETENTION OF L2 WORD MEANINGS

By Jan-Arjen Mondria. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2003

147 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study investigated whether a word-learning method in which learners infer the meaning of unknown words from the context, subsequently verify the meaning with the aid of a word list, and finally memorize the meaning (“meaning-inferred method”) leads to better retention than one in which the meaning of unknown words is given in the form of a translation so that learners can immediately start memorizing (“meaning-given method”). Additionally, the learning effect of the various stages of the meaning-inferred method (inferring, verifying, and memorizing) was investigated. In all cases the amount of time invested was recorded. The most important findings were: (a) The meaning-inferred method leads to a similar level of retention as the meaning-given method, but the former is considerably more time-consuming and therefore less efficient; and (b) each separate stage of the meaning-inferred method leads to retention, but the learning effect of memorizing is the greatest, and the learning effect of verifying is about the same as that of inferring.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Language and Linguistics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/72784fb69ea1287530bb25a5b62253a515b1f519

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Artificial Intelligence

1. N. Schmitt
2. Paul Nation
3. E. Peters
4. B. Laufer
5. Bella Rozovski-Roitblat
6. Suhad Sonbul
7. Stuart Webb
8. Lili Tian

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. N. Schmitt
2. E. Peters
3. Bella Rozovski-Roitblat
4. Paul Nation
5. B. Laufer
6. E. Macaro
7. Stuart Webb
8. Suhad Sonbul

In Language and Linguistics

1. N. Schmitt
2. Bella Rozovski-Roitblat
3. Paul Nation
4. E. Macaro
5. E. Peters
6. Lili Tian
7. Suhad Sonbul
8. Stuart Webb

Citations in the corpus

• Review article: Instructed second language vocabulary learning (2008, background): “Mondria (2003) gives a particularly good illustration of the value of post-reading exercises.”
• Principles guiding vocabulary learning through extensive reading (2015, background): “If learners confirm the meaning of a word, for example by looking it up in a dictionary after they have guessed it from context clues, this greatly increases learning (Fraser, 1999; Mondria, 2003).”
• Processing glosses: A qualitative exploration of how form-meaning connections are established and strengthened (2005, unknown): “The question that arises is whether the time spend on using multiple strategies to assign a correct meaning to unknown words would be better spend by reading a unenhanced text and subsequently completing specific exercises to rehearse targeted words (Mondria, 2003).”
• Direct Teaching of Vocabulary after Reading: Is It Worth the Effort?. (2010, background): “Mondria (2003) found that the combination of word inferencing followed up by verification with a word list led to just as much vocabulary learning (about 50 per cent) as giving students an L1 translation before memorization.”
• Comparing the effect of teacher codeswitching with English-only explanations on the vocabulary acquisition of Chinese university students: A Lexical Focus-on-Form study (2012, background): “For example, Mondria (2003) found that, in addition to inferring meaning from context, verification and memorization processes enhanced lexical acquisition.”
• Incidental vocabulary acquisition: The effects of task type, word occurrence and their combination (2011, background): “For additional studies on the effectiveness of learning lists, see Griffin and Harley (1996), Prince (1996), Qian (1996), Laufer and Shmueli (1997), Waring (1997), Mondria (2003), Webb (2007b).”