M A 3 C 0 2 0 6 B R I G I T T E M A 3 C 0 2 1 0 C H E L S E A 4 A 0 C 0 0 4 4 C O C O

A Comparative Study of the Effects of Multiple Choice and Sentence Writing

on Junior High School Students’ Vocabulary Retention

Department of English

National Kaohsiung Normal University

Master’s Thesis

Advisor: Dr. Ching Chi Chen

Graduate: Jing Ting Sun

2008.06

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

This study aims to investigate which of the two types

of exercises, multiple choice(MC) or original

sentence writing (OSW), help learners gain better

vocabulary retention, and within almost the same

amount of time, which would be more efficient.

Background and Motivation

Language learners usually find that the lack of vocabulary impedes the comprehension of L2 materials, or hinders the learners from expressing themselves(Folse, 2006).

To many teacher and students, OSW seems to bring unequaled retention effects because it is a productive skill which will push to think(Folse, 2006)

According to Nation’s retention model(2001), there are two types of retrieval receptive and productive.

In school of all levels in Taiwan or even all over the globe, one of the goals language teachers try to achieve is to find out the most effective way to enlarge the size of students’ vocabulary.

Among all types of exercises, cloze, sentence writing, MC, and matching are the popular ones in Taiwan.

Generally speaking, productive processing brings about deeper-level metal elaboration than receptive processing, an hence, generates better retention.

Purpose of the study

This study tries to find out which one of the three

conditions is the most effective and efficient in both long

and short-term memory

3 conditions are listed as follow:

(1) one set of MC

(2) 3 sets of MC

(3) one set of OSW

Research Question

Which one of the three conditions, one MC, three MCs or one OSW, has the best retention result in terms of short-term memory?

Which one of the three conditions, one MC, three MCs or one OSW, has the best retention result in terms of long-term memory?

Which type of exercises, MC or OSW, has better ratio of score to time in term of short-term memory?

Which type of exercises, MC or OSW, has better ration of score to time in term of long-term memory?

What are the attitudes the subjects have toward the three exercise conditions?

Significance of the study

It is hope that the result of the study can significantly contribute some knowledge to the efficacy of tasks in vocabulary acquiring, and offer knowledge about students’ opinions on the three exercise conditions.

The finding in this study may benefit textbook editors in editing teaching materials for facilitating learning to acquire new words and could be also beneficial for language instructors.

Limitation of the study

No meaningful contexts were presented to the subjects for fear that when the subjects did the OSW, they might copy from the example sentences, which would obviously affect the validity of the study.

Due to the level of the subjects, Chinese was used in OSW exercises by the subjects to express their ideas if they do not know the counterpart in English.

The retention of the target vocabulary only referred to the translation of meanings in the current research.

Chapter Two

LITERATURE REVIEW

Three main aspects of LR

1. The incremental nature of vocabulary knowledge:

To help the readers understand the fact of vocabulary

knowledge acquisition.

2. Incidental vocabulary learning:

Play a crucial role when it comes to learning or acquiring

a language, whether L1 or L2.

3. Involvement Load Hypothesis:

The psychological cognitive process involved in

vocabulary learning.

The three concepts: Noticing, Retrieval and Generation

Vocabulary Knowledge

1. It is an indispensable component of all language learning.

2. It is widely recognized that vocabulary knowledge develops with a multi-facet fashion.

1. Nation (2001):

Form: a. spoken

R: What does the word sound like?

P: How is the word pronounced?

b. written

R: What does the word look like?

P: How is the word written and spelled?

c. word parts

R: What parts are recognizable in this

word?

P: What word parts needed to express the

meaning?

1. Nation (2001):

Meaning: a. form and meaning

R: What meaning does this word form signal?

P: What word form can be used to express this

meaning?

b. concept and referents

R: What is included in the concept?

P: What items can the concept refer to?

c. associations

R: What other words does this make us think of?

P: What other words could we use instead of this

one?

1. Nation (2001):

Use: a. grammatical functions

R: In what patterns does the word occur?

P: In what patterns must we use this word?

b. collocations

R: What words or types of words occur with this one?

P: What words or types of words must we use with

this one?

c. constraints on use (register, frequency…)

R: Where, when and how often would we expect to

meet this word?

P: Where, when and how often can we use this word?

2. Henriksen (1996):

The knowledge of vocabulary develops in a hierarchical order.

Three continua to explain vocabulary development:

I. The partial-precise continuum: shows different levels of declarative word knowledge.

II. The receptive-productive continuum: tells how much usability one possesses in terms of vocabulary knowledge.

III. The depth-of-knowledge continuum: involves the paradigmatic and syntagmatic relation along with the referential meaning.

Incidental Vocabulary Learning

1. It is an accidental learning of information with the intention of remembering that information. Hulstijn, Hollander & Greidanus (1996)

2. It is a learning of vocabulary as the by-product of any activity not explicitly geared to vocabulary learning. Hulstijn (2001)

Gass (1999)

It has been argued that except for the first

few thousand common words, most of

one’s second language vocabulary is

acquired incidentally through reading.

1. It offers examples of the target word in the context.

2. It is pedagogically efficient since the vocabulary acquisition and reading skill both

used and improved simultaneously.3. It is more learner-centered so that the learners

can practice in accordance with their learning speed.

The benefits of Incidental vocabulary acquisition

Depth of Processing

The memory trace can be understood as a by-product of perceptual analysis and trace persistence is a positive function of the depth to which the stimulus has been analyzed. Craik and Lockhart (1972)

A task which asks the participants to work

out the meaning of words produces better

vocabulary retention than another task that

required them to merely cross out certain

letters in the words.

Criticism

The absence of measurement of depth: without the measurement whereby different levels of processing can be verified, this model is not empirically testable. Baddeley, 1978; Eysenck, 1993; Nelson, 1977.

It is hard to predict whether the exercise with deeper processing would produce better retention result.

Involvement Load Hypothesis

It is a task-induced involvement load, motivational-cognitive construct. Laufer and Hulstijn (2001).

Three basic elements are taken into account:1. Need2. Search3. Evaluation

1. Need: the motivational, non-cognitive dimension of the hypothesis.

2. Search: a cognitive dimension of the hypothesis.

3. Evaluation: a cognitive dimension of the hypothesis.

Laufer & Hulstijn (2001) proposed that the

three involvement factors may not have the

same weight when evaluating the effect of a

vocabulary exercise.

Noticing, Retrieval and Generation

According to Nation (2001), there are three significant psychological conditions related to efficient vocabulary learning process:

1. Noticing2. Retrieval 3. Generation

1. The first process encouraging learning is noticing, that is giving attention to an item.

2. The second condition for effective vocabulary retention to occur is retrieval, which involves

recall of previously met items.

3. The third factor that helps a ward be memorized is generation, which is a critical

factor in L1 and L2 learning.

Chapter Three

METHODOLOGY

Methodology

A follow up of Folse’s study (Folse, 2006)

The purpose of the research can be classified into two categories:

The effects resulting from exercise types

to explore the effects on Ss’ vocabulary retention

The students’ attitudes toward the two exercise types

to reveal the Ss’ preferences, evaluations, possible reasons

Subjects

90 EFL students in the second year

Yo-chang Junior High School in Nanzi, Kaosiung

Three different classes with normal class grouping

Including male and female, aged from 14~16

Experiment Design

Three conditions of vocabulary exercises

(one set of MC, three sets of MCs, a set of OSW)

which one has the best retention result in terms of

effectiveness and efficiency for short-term and long-term memory

All of the subjects practiced the same target words

4

4

4

12

These words shouldn’t familiar to the subjects

Target Words

Do not fall in the range of the basic words announced by the MOE

Multi-word items, like phrases or idioms

Words that could be identified by its suffixes or prefixes

Words with multiple meanings

The length of words fell in the range from 5~7 letters

Grammar categories (part of speech)

The words whose Chinese pronunciation is borrowed from English

counterpart

Vocabulary Assessment

The Pilot Test

To find out how many MCs may be done within the time

for one OSW

One of the three classes joined the pilot test

The number of the subjects was 36

16 words were selected based on a vocabulary assessment

(8 for MC, the other 8 for OSW)

The material was based on the textbooks

Instruments

Practice booklets

To investigate which condition would yield better retention

Questionnaire

To realize the subjects’ attitudes and opinions

Procedure

Picking out possible target words from vocabulary study lists designed for senior high third graders

Conducting the word assessment to decide on the target words for the pilot test and the treatment session

Conducting a pilot test to find out how many MCs can be done within the time for one OSW

Preparing practice booklets

Conducting the pretest

Asking the subjects to finish the practice booklets for the treatment session

Conducting the posttest to compare the retention effects on short-term memory

Conducting the delayed posttest a week later to test the effects on long-term memory and asking the subjects to

fill out the questionnaire

Analyzing the data

Data Analysis

1. To examine effects of task types on short-term and long-term

retention

Quantitative analyses

2. To investigate the Ss’ attitudes toward the two exercise types

The questionnaire

Chapter Four

RESULTS

&

DISCUSSION

RQ 1: Which one of the three conditions, one MC, three MCs or one OSW, has the best retention result in terms of short-term memory?

1. Condition 2 outperformed Condition 1. The reason is that the two conditions are of the same type of exercise and the target words of the former were practiced triple times as those of the latter.

2. The retention score of Condition 2 was significantly better than that of Condition 3. Condition 3 was believed to induce deep-level processing, strong evaluation, and productive generation.

RQ 2: Which one of the three conditions, one MC, three MCs or one OSW, has the best retention result in terms of long-term memory?1. According to the figures of tests of with-in subject effects, the main effect of exercise type was not statistically significant.

2. Possible explanation of the result could be that without enough practice or review of the target words, as time passed by, the participants forgot most of the words they had encountered during the treatment session.

RQ 3: Which type of exercises, MC or OSW, has better ratio of score to time in terms of short-term memory?

1. The MC conditions were more efficient than OSW.

2. The reason for the figures may be that doing one OSW take much longer time than one MC, which resulting in the outcome that the ratio of OSW is lower than that of Condition 1.

RQ 4: Which type of exercises, MC or OSW, has better ratio of score to time in terms of long-term memory?

1. There was no significant difference between Conditions 2 and 3. It can be inferred that with time passing by, neither MC nor OSW were more efficient than the other, just like what happened in Question 2 in the current research.

2. Perhaps not enough practice or no more review was given between the two posttests led to a result like this.

RQ 5: What are the attitudes the participants have toward the three conditions?

1. Both Conditions 2 and 3 would be regarded

as helpful conditions.

2. The frequency would be counted for

Conditions 1 and 2 both.

Chapter Five

FINDING AND CONCLUSION

Finding

The research question dealt with the effectiveness to short-term memory

Condition 2 is the most significantly of three

conditionsThe research question dealt with the effectiveness to

long-term memory.

Condition 3 is the most significantly of three

conditions

With regard to the ratio score to time :

condition 1 performed the best of all

It could be concluded that MC is a more efficient

tool than OSW in respect of short-term memory

The responses on the questionnaire:

Condition 2 > Condition 3 > Condition 1

As to the preference of exercise types:

Condition 2 > Condition 1 > Condition 3

Which condition was the least favored:

Condition 3 > Condition 1 > Condition 2

Conclusions

OSW is claimed to have better mental processing qualities, which yield more elaborate, durable, and stronger memory traces.

Fill-in-blank exercises could have a deep level of processing, because the target words practiced with fill-in-blank are also processed semantically.

Practicing 3 MCs was favored for its effectiveness and efficiency.

Implications

TheoreticalPrecisely predicting effectiveness of a certain type of exercise is much more complicated than what the theories mentioned in the current research has conceived.

PedagogicalMC is more efficient than OSW, and MC benefits both teachers and students in term of time.

The type of exercise that is preferred over OSW, and therefore, most students would finish this type of practice willingly.

Though OSW is a time-consuming, it is a useful tool if the goal of vocabulary is more than memorization.

Most of junior high school students seldom have the chance to practice creating their own sentences.

Exercise type of school grammar-centered

Exercise type of this study content-centered

As the result of the current research showed that repetition is important for maintaining retention.

It can be inferred that the retention link will be

effectively fortified if the repetition is embedded in a

task which induce high-level mental processing.

Suggestions for Further Research

Further researcher can conduct experiments on students of high levels to find out whether the outcome is the same for subjects of different levels.

Researchers may investigate the effect of task for different time intervals to know the effect of different types of repetition on retention.

Further researchers may apply more sets of exercises to compare their effectiveness and efficiency between conditions.

In the current research, only MC and OSW were compared. Further studies may investigate different combinations of types.

Q & A

According to your own learning experience, do you

agree with the author’s vocabulary exercise types?

According to your teaching experience, do you agree

that these three exercise types can help students to

memorize vocabulary?

If you are interested in this research, you can visit this website…

http://www.keithfolse.com/