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Memorizing New Words: Does Teaching Have Anything

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DOI: 10.1177/003368829702800106

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 RELC Journal
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Memorizing New Words: Does Teaching Have Anything To Do With It?

Batia Laufer and Karen Shmueli
RELC Journal 1997 28: 89
DOI: 10.1177/003368829702800106

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MEMORIZING NEW WORDS:
DOES TEACHING HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT?

Batia Laufer and Karen Shmueli

University of Haifa
Abstract

The paper examines the relationship between memorization of

new words (short-term and long-term) and teaching techniques

involving different modes of vocabulary presentation and different

language of vocabulary glossing. The four modes were: 1- words
presented in isolation, 2 - in ’minimal context’, i.e., in one
meaningful sentence, 3 - in text-context, 4 - in ’elaborated’ text
context, i.e., in the original text supplemented by clarifying phrases
and sentences. In each mode of presentation, half (ten) of the words
were translated into learners’ L 1 and half were explained in

English. An additional group of learners served as a control. They

were asked to learn the words for a quiz by themselves. All subjects
were tested on the short-term and long-term retention of the target

words. Retention scores were compared by mode of presentation,

language of glossing and the interaction between the two. Words
glossed in L1 were always better retained than those glossed in
L2. As for context effect, words presented in lists and in sentences
were remembered better than words presented in text and
elaborated text. The control group received the lowest scores. The
results underscore the importance of attending to newly learnt
vocabulary and relating it to the first language. It is suggested
that mental elaboration which is claimed to affect retention may
not necessarily take place when words are encountered in texts.
On the other hand, bilingual lists may be conducive to such
elaboration.

Background
It is only common sense that without words there can be no proper
communication, however basic. Expressing messages of a four-year-old
native-speaking child would require about 700 words (Kirkpatrick, quoted
in Nation, 1990), and as communication becomes more complex and
sophisticated the knowledge of vocabulary needs to be refined and
expanded to several thousands (see for example ’Cambridge English
Lexicon’ by Hindmarsh, 1980).

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 Yet in a second or foreign language, knowledge of those thousands
of words is not easily achieved. Consider, for example, the gap between
the vocabulary of learners and that of native speakers as reflected in the
following figures: learners at the Cambridge FCE (First Certificate of
English) proficiency level, which is also the level of many high school
graduates in English in the Western world, are supposed to know around
3000-3500 words (word families). Eighteen year old native speakers of
English, on the other hand, are reported to know about 18,000 words,
according to modest estimates (Nation 1990).
This difference is in itself reason enough for investing
striking
teaching efforts into the vocabulary development of SL/FL learners.
But there are additional benefits to increasing vocabulary richness.
Vocabulary size was shown to be the best predictor of reading
comprehension in L I and L2 (Anderson and Freebody 198 l, Koda 1989,
Laufer 1991 ). Vocabulary correlates highly with global assessment of
writing quality (Astika 1993, Engber 1993) and with general language
proficiency scores.
But how does one assure successful long-term retention of words
without which no vocabulary growth can occur? One variable which is
claimed to affect memory is frequency of exposure (Palmberg 1987)
though it is not clear how many times and how often the learner should
be exposed to the word. In the case of incidental learning of words by
reading, 16 repetitions are suggested by Saragi et al. ( 1978) and 10 by
Wodinsky and Nation ( 1988).
A different approach to reinforcing retention emphasizes not the
quantity of repetitions, but the quality of word processing. The basic tenet
of this approach is that linking the new word with other words associated
with it, in terms of form, meaning, or context, provides an opportunity for
deeper or more elaborate processing of the target word, which in turn
leads to the formation of a more persistent trace and consequently better
memory performance. Elaborate processing can be achieved by
meaningful, personalized activities connected with the word (Gaims and
Redman 1986, Palmberg 1988), by using verbal and imagery mnemonics
(Atkinson and Raugh 1975, Kelly 1986, Cohen 1987 for a review of
research), or by using text context both for working out the meaning of
unknown words and for practicing them (Schouten-van Parreren 1989).

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Teaching Conditions, Context and Glossing
How much context?

When words are explicitly taught, rather than learnt incidentally, the
context in which they are presented can be manipulated by the teacher.
Many teachers nowadays believe words should be presented in some kind
of context and not in isolation. The common practice is to make students
encounter them in a text. The arguments for such a method are the
following: first, it is only natural for people to encounter new words in
context. Second, the context illustrates some common usages of the word.
Third, as already mentioned, context contributes to elaborate processing
of a word and provides a cognitive foothold, which in turn reinforces
memorization. If contextual associations contribute to learning, it would
follow that the richer the context, the better the learning. Thus, presentation
of words in isolation would be less effective than presentation in context.
As for type of context, the more elaborated and richer in associations, the
better. Following this argument, we could claim that text context would
be more effective than sentence context and that ’elaborated’ text (Yano
et al. 1994) would be more effective than normal text. In elaborated texts
the original ideas are repeated, or modified from time to time. For that
purpose, often paraphrase is used which has an explanatory function. From
the point of view of learning new words, such additions provide better
clues to understanding and additional associations which could serve as a
cognitive foothold for memorizing these words.

However, one can argue against the advantages of context in

memorizing words. When new words appear in a text and the text is read
for meaning, individual words, including the new words to be learnt, may
go unnoticed, particularly if they are not essential for understanding the
main points. And one of the conditions for transforming input into intake
is noticing and attending to the new material (Schmidt 1990 and 1992).
According to Schmidt, what must be attended to and noticed is not any
input, but the specific features one is acquiring, that is to acquire
phonology, one must notice phonology, to acquire lexis, one must attend
to lexis. There is empirical evidence for the position that &dquo;intake is the
subset of input that is attended to and noticed&dquo; (Schmidt 1992:210), that
focusing on particular structure is indeed effective (Doughty 1991). Yet
when new words appear in a text which is read for global understanding,
the learner will often skip these words rather than focus on them. If focus

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and attention are essential while context has a distracting quality, it would
follow that better retention of new words may be achieved with less
distraction, i.e., less context. In other words, a short context would be
more beneficial than a long one, and no context, i.e., words in lists would

be learnt better than words in context since in the latter case, maximum
attention would be directed to the word. Following this argument, the
prediction would be that words in lists are remembered better than words
presented in sentences, and these are remembered better than words
presented in text. The worst condition for word memorization, involving
the most distraction, would be the elaborated text.

Explanation of words: in what language?

When the learner’s attention is directed to the new word and the teacher
opts for explanation rather than relying on the students’ guesses, the
explanation can be done by paraphrasing the word in L2, or by translating
it into the learner’s mother tongue. The proponents of the first option
would claim that translation will often be inexact and will provide only
partial knowledge of the word, which may later lead to erroneous use of
the word since the learner will assume a one-to-one correspondence
between L1 and L2 words. Explanation in L2, on the other hand, will
provide examples of usage and additional exposure to the language which
is beneficial for language learning in general. Translation may be used
only to supplement an unclear and difficult L2 explanation. Rivers and
Temperley ( 1978) believe that translation can become a ’crutch’ if used
too often. A militant stand against translation when used on its own, is
taken by Gefen ( 1987) who claims that it &dquo;encourages lazy minds and so
inhibits the transfer of the new item to long-term memory&dquo; (1987:42).
Two practical reasons for the preference of L2 for new word explanation
are multilingual classes and the teacher’s ignorance of the learners’ L I
even when the class shares the same mother tongue.

On the other hand, the proponents of translating the new words into
the learners’ mother tongue argue that first, many words can be translated
into another language quite precisely (Dagut 1977). Since human
experience is to some extent universal, many concepts are lexicalised
similarly in different languages. If this were not the case, the task of foreign
language learning would be much more difficult. In cases where concepts
are lexicalised differently (e.g. English ’know’ and French ’savoir’ and

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’connaitre’), the learner should be made aware of this difference in order
to avoid confusing the two L2 items for which his/her native tongue has
only one word. Such an awareness cannot be reached without referring to
L 1. Another argument for translation has to do with the learner’s needs.
One of the most comprehensive studies comprising over 1000 learners in
seven European countries (Atkins and Knowles 1990) shows that bilingual
dictionaries are used by the majority of the students (75%). This preference
does not necessarily mean that bilingual dictionaries are better than
monolingual, or that teachers do not teach and encourage the use of
monolingual dictionaries. Very often they do. The data simply mean that
learners feel a psychological necessity to find L I equivalents for newly
encountered words and do not feel secure about understanding them untilI
they relate them to their mother tongue. This explains Piotrowski’s ( 1989)
statement that &dquo;no matter what their level of competence foreign learners
and users use their bilingual dictionaries as long as they use dictionaries
at all&dquo; (p.73).

Quantity of context and language of presentation combined

If we were to adopt a technique-for presenting new words involving a

specific condition (one of the alternatives mentioned earlier) and
context
select the language of explanation, L1 or L2, we would receive eight
alternative methods to choose from. These are presented in the chart below.

Among the four modes of presentation which were based on the

quantity of context, the first two - list and sentence could be called focus
oriented as maximum focus on the word is required in lists and minimal
context distraction occurs in a sentence. The other two could be called
context oriented, as the target words are embedded in a broad context and
no particular focus on them is required during the reading task. The aim
of the study described in the paper was to examine the relationship between
memorization (short-term and long-term) of new words and the above
teaching techniques which involve different modes of vocabulary
presentation and different languages of vocabulary glossing.

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The Study
The research questions for the study were as follows:
1. Is short and long term memorization of new words affected by the
quantity of context used in presentation?
2. Is short and long term memorization of new words affected by the
language of presentation?
3. Is short and long term memorization of new words affected by the
interaction of the quantity of context and language of presentation?

The Subjects
Five groups of high school pupils studying in the highest level English
classes were chosen for the experiment. The pupils’ common mother
tongue is Hebrew. The classes were of a comparable level because the
pupils were all in the same grades and in the same school system. They
were normal average pupils with a grade range in each class from

’satisfactory (60-70) to ’excellent’ (90-97).

The following table visualizes the division of groups: four experimental
groups and one control group.

The Material for Presentation and Explanation of Words

The target words

Twenty low frequency words were chosen for the experiment. The
words were checked for previous knowledge by testing a small sample of
pupils in each class. The Ministry of Education’s syllabus as well as West’s
Word List confirmed the fact that all the words were considered ’low
frequency’.

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The list group

For the ’list’ group a list of 20 words was prepared. Ten words were
translated into Hebrew (the pupils’ L 1 ) and ten were paired with English
definitions or synonyms. As in a natural classroom situation, the division
was done inconspicuously, making the LI or L2 choice of

semanticization appear to be at random according to the ease with which

a definition for each could be provided. This procedure is not foreign to

the pupils, since it is used in the course of their studies.

The sentence group

The material for the ’sentence’ group consisted of the 20 target words
(each word either translated or defined as for the list group) with the
addition of a sentence in which each of the words was used.
For example: r-eign - govern
The people were unhappy under the reign of their cruel king.

The text group

The ’text’ group read a passage which was chosen from a British
course book not in use in public Israeli high schools. All 20 target words
appeared in the text and were glossed along the left-hand side of the
page in Hebrew or English. No clear contextual clues were supplied by
the text, thereby making inferencing extremely difficult.

The elaborated text group

The material for the ’elaborated’ text group consisted of the original
text which had undergone lexical elaboration, thereby facilitating the pupils
to understand the text and/ or the meaning of the target words while reading.
Additionally, such elaboration would make the pupils refer to the target
words. Lexical elaboration was achieved by adding either synonyms or a
brief explanation to the original sentence. Consequently, the elaborated text
was 8% longer than the original version (601 words as compared to 555
words in the original text). In addition to producing a longer text, elaboration
produced a text more advanced in readability (9.7 compared with 9.1 based
on Flesch-Kincaide grade level). As in the original text, the same 20 words
were glossed and defined at the side of the text.

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 An example of text elaboration:
The original text was -’It was a stereotype seized upon avidly by the
film industry.’ The addition was -’People willingly adopted this image
and it was a stereotype seized upon avidlv by the film industry as well.’

The control group

The material for this group consisted of the list of 20 target words
sans definitions and translations.

Procedure

The ’list’ group was asked to study the word pair list for 10 minutes.
The ’sentence’ group was asked to focus on the words and read the
sentences. They also were given 10 minutes to study the worksheet. (See
appendix 1 )
The ’text’ group was asked to read a passage and answer the

accompanying exercises. There were three different kinds of reading

comprehension exercises: matching, true/ false, and comprehension
questions. The exercises dealt with the whole text. No particular focus on
the target words was needed (appendix 1 ). This task took 55 minutes.

The ’elaborated’ text group read the elaborated text (appendix I ) and
answered the same comprehension questions as the text group. This group
worked on the task for 55 minutes, the same amount of time as the original
text group.

None of the above groups were told they would be tested.

Consolidation Task - a cloze exercise

At the end of the practice period the four study groups were given 15
minutes to complete a cloze exercise focusing on the 20 target words.
While all 20 words were supplied in a word bank at the bottom of the
page, only 16 were needed to fill in the gaps. The cloze passage was not
taken from the text itself. After the initial study period and consolidation
task all worksheets were collected from the four study groups.

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The control group

The control group was asked to check the meaning of the 20 target
words and learn for a quiz that would be administered the following day.
No instructions were given as to which language the quiz would be
conducted in nor how the words should be semanticized. The pupils never
underwent the class learning period nor were they given the consolidation
task (the vocabulary cloze). The pupils’ word lists were collected before
the quiz. It became evident that all the words were looked up in a bilingual
dictionary.

Vocabulary retention test

A multiple-choice test was prepared using only English synonyms

or definitions. The English answers were not identical to the original
English glosses. During the experiment, e.g., avidlv was translated into
Hebrew - belahat, in the multiple choice vocabulary test it was paired with
another synonym - enthu.siastically. The target word reign was paired with
govern in the glosses and reworded as ritle on the test. There were 3
distractors: a unilingual definition of another word on the list presented in
English, the translation of a Hebrew definition given for another word on
the list, and a distractor not connected with any of the words on the list.
This format did not favor any one of the two languages as the distractors
were different from the original glosses. The vocabulary test was given to
all five groups twice: immediately at the end of the study period and again
5 weeks later.

As mentioned before, contrary to the control group, the four study

groups did not expect to be tested at the end of their study period. Five
weeks later, without being informed of the test, all five groups were retested
(using the same multiple-choice vocabulary test). Since the target words
were all considered low-frequency, it is highly unlikely that the pupils
were exposed to any of the words outside the classroom in the intervening
time. Even if they had been, all the pupils would have had an equal
opportunity for this exposure, therefore the group differences would not
have been affected by it.

The following table presents the summary of procedure for the 4

experimental groups:

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Results

Method effect

Our first research question addresses the issue of the quantity of context
used in presentation, i.e., the method effect. Table I (see graph 1 ) presents
the short and long-term retention scores of all 5 methods of presentation
and the statistical differences between them (means, standard deviation,
and results of ANOVA). As we can see from the results, there is a
significant difference between methods. The post-hoc Duncan test shows
exactly where the differences are. The methods marked with the different
letters are significantly different. The least effective method proved to be
the control group (non-teaching group). The most effective method for
long-term retention was sentence and list presentation.

Table 1 : Method effect

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 Post hoc - Duncan’s multiple range test

Language of glossing effect

Our second research question addresses the issue of the language
used in presentation, i.e., the language effect. Table 2 (see graph 2) presents
the short and long-term retention scores of the 2 languages used in

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presentation (English glosses and Hebrew glosses) and the statistical
differences between them (means, standard deviation, and results of the
Matched t-test). We can see that the best results were obtained when
glossing in the pupils’ L I (Hebrew).

Table 2 : Language effect

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Interaction of method and language of glossing

Our third research question addresses the issue of the interaction effect,
i.e., method by language. Tables 3a and 3b (see graphs 3a and 3b) present
the short and long-term retention scores by methods of the languages used
in presentation (English glosses and Hebrew glosses). We can see that the
best results were obtained when glossing in the pupils’ L 1 (Hebrew).
(Language effect and method by language effect were checked for the 4
experimental groups only. As mentioned before, all learners in the control
group looked up translations for the target words.)

Table 3a : Method by language - short-term retention

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Table 3b : Method by language - long-term retention

The results ofANOVA with repeated measures showed similar results

for short and long-term memorization.
1) There was method effect, i.e., differences between the mean scores in
method conditions were significant. For short-term retention the
following results were obtained in L 1 condition: F(3, 94) 4.87, =

p=0.003 and in the L2 condition F(3,94) = 3.28, p=0.002. For long-

term retention the following results were obtained in L 1 condition:
F(3,87) 3.24, p=0.026, in L2 condition F(3,87) = 3.23, p=0.026.
=

2) There was language of glossing effect, short-term retention test -

F( 1,94) = 42.71, p=0.0001, long-term retention test - F( 1,87) 37.68, =

p=0.0001.
3) There was no interaction between method and language of glossing,
short-term - F(3,94) = 1.54, p=0.2, long-term - F(3,87) = 0.14, p=0.94.
This lack of interaction shows that no one method favors a specific
language.

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Discussion

Retention rate .

Let us look first at long term vocabulary retention scores. The learners
in the ’list’ and ’sentence’ methods retained 75% of words (15 out of 20):
in the elaborated text condition - 61%, in the text condition - 60%. In
Mondria 1993 (a study that also compared retention of words presented
in isolation, in sentences and in a text), retention rates after 4 weeks were
I
as follows: 52% (5.2 out of 10) in the ’list’ condition, 62% in ’sentence’
condition and 76% in ’text’ condition. The results. of the two studies, as
far as retention figures are concerned, show good retention. In Hulstijn et
al. (forthcoming), however, learners were found to retain 18% of the words
that were glossed in the text they were reading and 25% of the words they
had looked up. These results were obtained immediately after completing
the reading task. The conclusion of the authors was that learners pick up
very little vocabulary from texts. Such differences between the last study
and the results from text conditions in Mondria and our own study is not
surprising. Vocabulary learning in Hulstijn et al. was purely incidental.
The learners were given a reading task, not a vocabulary task. In Mondria’s
study, the learners were specifically asked to learn the target words from
the text, i.e., they were engaged in an explicit vocabulary learning task. In
our study, though the learners were reading the text for comprehension,

they received a consolidation exercise which required them to practice

the target words in a cloze, each word once. Thus, the kind of learning we
have in our study is quasi incidental: no focus on specific words is required
during the reading task, but some attention is drawn to these words in a
follow-up exercise.

Language of glossing
Glosses in L 1 proved more beneficial for retention than glosses in
English. This was the case with the mean retention scores when the
language of glossing conditions were compared. As there was no ’language
by method’ interaction, we could not claim that one of the methods lent
itself better to glossing in English. The reason for the superiority of L 1
glosses may be explained by the fact that in this condition (glossing in
L I ), maximum attention is directed to the new L2 word since the L 1
equivalent is fully familiar to the learner and consists of only one word.

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In the case of L2 glosses, on the other hand, the synonym of the target
word may itself have been recently acquired and therefore relatively new,
or a long paraphrase may have been recently acquired and therefore

relatively new, or a long paraphrase may have distracted the attention

from the word to be leamt. The usefulness of translations was also shown
by the marked preference for bilingual dictionaries in the case of the control
group. When asked to look up the new words and make sure that the
meanings were familiar for a quiz to be given the next day, all the learners
relied solely on the translation.

Method of presentation effect

Looking at the Post-Hoc ANOVA tables, we can see that the control
group which studied the words by itself fared worst. Yet it is still unclear,
from this experiment, whether this difference is due solely to the effect of
presentation method, or whether the consolidation exercise played a part
in it as well. A follow up study will examine self-learning with a
consolidation task and compare it with the four experimental methods.
As for these four methods checked in the present study, we can see that an
identical consolidation task did not abolish the differences among them,
even though it may have reduced them. The ’list’ and ’minimal context’
methods were superior to the ’text’ and ’elaborated text’ methods. In other
words, the focus oriented methods were more effective for memorization
than context oriented methods. Moreover, they took up less teaching time,
25 minutes as opposed to 70 minutes. This importance of focus may also
have been responsible for the better scores in the ’elaborated text’ group
than in the ’text’ group. The nature of the elaborated text was such that
the additional phrases referred back and forth to the target words (they
included synonyms, paraphrases, etc.) and might have made learners look
at the target words once more.

Ourresults, which show the superiority of focus over context, seem,

at glance, to conflict with Mondria’s (1993). He found that words
first
presented in text were better remembered than when presented in sentences
and these were better than words presented in lists. But a close examination
of the two studies shows no contradiction at all. Mondria’s text was in the
learners’ mother tongue and the target words were pseudowords. It is
reasonable to assume that the students read fluently in their L I and the
only words that stood out in the text and drew attention were the target

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pseudowords. In our study, the text was in L2 and reading may not have
been without difficulty. Therefore, concentration on content may have
made the target words go unnoticed. More importantly, the learners in
Mondria’s study were explicitly told to learn the target words, while our
students were not. Thus his students were asked to focus on the target
words even though they were in a text. We do not know how many words
they would have remembered if they HAD NOT been explicitly asked to
learn the target words, i.e., if the focus variable had been removed and
acquisition had been incidental.
The superiority of the focus methods in our. study does not mean that
the mental elaboration, or deep processing hypothesis as an aid in retention
is not valid. What our results suggest is that a text in a second language
may not necessarily be conducive to this kind of elaboration of the new
words. First, if the text is read for meaning and individual unknown words
are skipped, what is not attended to cannot be processed deeply. Second,
if these words are guessed easily, what is easily guessed, is also forgotten
(Mondria and Wit-de Boer 1991 ). Third, even if the unknown words are
focused on, the ready-made associative context provided by the text may
not be as effective as is generally believed. Associative context is most
beneficial for retention when it is created by the learner himself. Cohen
and Aphek ( 1981 ) found that associations created by the learner were
more effective than those provided by the teacher.

Our results also raise the question how real is the common belief that
learning words in lists is done by rote only. There is no reason why lists of
words with their L translations should preclude deep processing on the
part of the learner who can embed the word in some kind of mental context.
In addition to simple rehearsal of the target word with its translation
(shallow processing), the learner may be learning the words by self-
generated imagery and semantic mediation (linking them to keywords,
making up phrases with them, etc.). It may be precisely this kind of learning
that explains the good results of learning words in lists which are surveyed
in Nation ( 1982).

Concluding remarks
The conclusion of this study is that focus oriented methods of
presenting new vocabulary are more effective than context oriented reading
methods as the former yield better long term retention scores while at the

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same time requiring less learning time. The use of L 1 glosses leads to
better results that the use of L2 glosses. Moreover, it is preferred by SL/
FL learners themselves. We do not mean to criticize the use of a reading
activity as such or to question the importance of reading skills. However,
it is unrealistic to expect vocabulary learning to be a by product of limited
quantities of reading, such as they are in a foreign language situation.
Incidental vocabulary acquisition will not occur if unfamiliar words are
not attended to: not noticed or not processed deeply. The fact that retention
scores in the reading conditions in our study are not too low, unlike in

Hulstijn’s et al. (forthcoming) may well be due to the consolidation exercise

that was given after the reading task. This activity drew attention to the
target words and has thus contributed to their memorization. Text context,
on the other hand, may have played a negligible role, if at all. In a follow

up study in which the variable of presentation and consolidation will be

separated we will investigate the exact contribution of each of the variables
to memorizing new words.

Note
A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the SEAMEO
RELC 31 st Seminar in Singapore.

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