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I read the follow-up study to the paper I covered in What to do outside of language class?. Let's talk about it. It's called Retention of new words: Quantity of encounters, quality of task, and degree of knowledge. This follow-up adds a pure reading condition for comparison along with the Focus on Form and Focus on Forms conditions in the previous study. They also test more thoroughly. But the most important change is that they tested each type of learning activity with different occurrences of the test words. The paper is certainly worth checking out. Alternatively, you can watch my summary.

The biggest takeaway from both studies is that there is value in deliberately practicing vocabulary, and more practice leads to more improvement. I expect this will be no surprise to anyone, but it's good to validate these assumptions with an actual study.

But what are good ways to practice? This study used four methods:

• Matching the target words with their definitions or synonyms
• Supplying L2 translations for the L1 equivalents of the target words in isolation
• Supplying L2 translations for the L1 equivalents of the target words in sentences
• Filling in sentence blanks (the target words were provided in a word bank)

I'm skeptical of the value of the first activity, but perhaps there is research to support it. The second is a similar activity to using flashcards. Both of these first two are exercises that work entirely out of the context of any narrative or even any sentence. This doesn't mean that they're useless, but learning usage in a context is very valuable, so this limits their value. The last two exercises both seem similar to cloze exercises. I've added it to my list to find research on that particular type of practice.

Software could be used very effectively to create these kinds of exercises. Anki, for example, can do flashcards and cloze exercises quite well, assuming you know enough to make good exercises for yourself or can get them from someone else.

In class, however, there are much better activities. Don't replace non-communicative exercises with communicative ones.

Value the Background

In the last three posts I've focused on the method of and results of testing in three studies. Another good reason to read these, however, is to read the background portions of the papers. They are a gold mine of ideas, their evaluations, and resources to study. This, dear reader, is reason enough for you to take me up on my idea of reading the paper yourself. I don't think you'll be disappointed.