This study investigates the effects of deep processing involved in vocabulary exercises on learning and retaining L2 words. More specifically, the present study addressed the following research questions: Of the matching, fill-in-the-blank, and senten...
This study investigates the effects of deep processing involved in vocabulary exercises on learning and retaining L2 words. More specifically, the present study addressed the following research questions: Of the matching, fill-in-the-blank, and sentence-writing exercises, which exercise is most effective for learning and retaining L2 words in terms of three aspects: (1) meaning, (2) form, and (3) use? 68 university students were assigned to one of the three groups. The participants were asked to complete the assigned vocabulary exercises with the minidictionary and were tested immediately and two weeks later on their learning and retention of the meaning, the form, and the use of the target words. The results of the immediate posttest indicated that the sentence-writing exercise requiring the deepest processing was significantly more effective than the matching and the fill-in-the-blank exercises for learning the meaning, the form, and the use of target words. However, after two weeks, there were no significant differences among the three exercises in retaining the meaning and the use of target words regardless of different levels of processing. Notably, the matching exercise was significantly better than the fill-in- the-blank and the sentence-writing exercises in retaining the form of target words.