View Content #24104

By Linda Forrest, CASLS Research Director

Learning hundreds of new words is one of the challenges of learning a new language. Students adopt multiple strategies to solve this problem, but unfortunately, the strategies they choose often do not lead to deep learning and long term retention of new materials. Cramming, reading and reading materials, and highlighting the textbook and class notes cause the material to feel familiar, but actually promote learning that is short-term and superficial. Different strategies are required to promote deep, long-term learning of new words and concepts.

Three strategies that have been demonstrated to be effective for deep learning are spaced learning (Sobel et al., 2011), retrieval practice (Morris et al., 2005), and elaborative semantic processing (Bugg et al., 2008). Understanding these effective strategies can help teachers plan curriculum; teaching the strategies explicitly to students can help them learn how to learn, as the strategies are equally applicable beyond vocabulary learning and in any content area.

Spaced (or distributed) learning is the opposite of cramming. Study sessions are distributed across time instead of being crammed into a single session. Students can do this on their own by using brief, but frequent, study sessions. Teachers can encourage this type of study by recycling vocabulary and giving frequent cumulative low-stakes quizzes or practice exercises that focus on the most recent materials but include items from all materials studied so far. Research has shown that re-studying material after about one week produces superior long-term retention as compared to cramming.

Retrieval practice gives students the chance to repeatedly retrieve information from memory—exactly the skill they need to communicate in real life. Retrieval exercises involve providing students with a cue, such as a picture or a definition, and asking them to recall the word. Such exercises can be presented as simple worksheets or elaborated into whole class activities, such as games.

Elaborative semantic processing techniques help students build connections between the new material and what they already know. One simple way to do this is to ask students  yes/no questions that require them to think about and understand the meaning of the new word. For example, students can study the words while answering questions like,  “Does this item fit in a backpack?”, "Do you have this item at home?”, or “Would you like to get this item for your birthday?” More elaborative techniques include having students draw a semantic map of a group of words, asking them to explain the new word in their own words, or asking them to compare and contrast a new word to one that they already know.

Although these strategies may make learning seem slower and more difficult, they lead to deep and long-term retention of the material.

References

Bugg, J. M.,  DeLosh, E. L., and Mark A. McDaniel, M. A. (2008). Improving students' study habits by demonstrating the mnemonic benefits of semantic processing. Teaching of Psychology, 35, 96 – 98.

Morris, P. E., Fritz, C. O., Jackson, L., Nichol, E. and Roberts, E. (2005). Strategies for learning proper names: expanding retrieval practice, meaning and imagery. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19, 779–798.

Sobel, H. S., Cepeda, N. J. and Kapler, I. V. (2011). Spacing effects in real-world classroom vocabulary learning.  Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25, 763–767.