I have selected fifty common words in the French language and made word cards using English translations and pictures, when applicable (Nation, 2001, p. 304). While Nation suggests keeping the cards simple, I have decided to include the gender on the noun cards (2001, p. 305). Throughout the exercise, I was training to pronounce the words and to use them in combination with each other (Nation, 2001, p. 307-308).
Number of Repetitions
As I was going through the pack for the first time, I noticed that I could remember the meaning of nine words, or approximately one-fifth of the total count, as a result of making the cards. As Nation suggests, I then used both receptive and productive learning techniques (2001, p. 306). I have gone through the pack three times looking at the side that contains the words themselves. After the first repetition, I was able to recall the meaning of seventeen words, and after the second and third – twenty-four and thirty-six, respectively. Between different attempts, I reshuffled the cards to avoid serial learning (Nation, 2001, p. 315).
I then used the reverse side to exercise recalling the word forms based on their meanings. As a result, I found that I have successfully memorized forty-three words. At this point, I put the seven words I had difficulties remembering near the beginning (Nation, 2001, p. 307). After two more repetitions, I was able to successfully recall the meaning and form of all fifty words. Thus, it took me two rounds to remember half of the words, three rounds to learn three-quarters, and six repetitions for all the words.
Difficulties
Throughout the exercise, I have encountered three categories of challenges. The first group is the so-called “false friends”, or words with a different meaning but a similar form or pronunciation in two different languages (Frunza & Inkpen, 2009, p. 3). For instance, when I saw the word “attendre”, my immediate association was the English word “to attend”; however, in French, it means “to wait”. Even though I learn to be aware of the false friends, their memorization was comparatively slower.
The words in the second group have spelling peculiarities that are absent in English. This group includes words such as “mère” (mother) and “sœur” (sister). While it was easy to remember their meaning, I experienced difficulties recollecting their form. Finally, since I decided to include the nouns’ gender in the cards, remembering them presented a separate challenge. The gender of nouns such as “mère” was intuitively clear, but some words did not have this self-explanatory link to their gender.
Use of Keyword Technique
I have used the keyword technique to memorize some of the selected words, for instance, “dire” (to say) and “aller” (to go). “Dire” has the same form as the English word that means “extremely serious, terrible”. The associated mental image was that of a person speaking in an agitated manner. “Aller”, on the other hand, does not have a corresponding English word with the same form, so I have selected the word “all”.
The visual image was that of a large group of people walking together. Thanks to the keywords, I was able to easily remember the meaning of foreign words. Overall, the method was quite effective, and it made the learning process more entertaining, but generating keywords was difficult and time-consuming in some cases.
Keyword Technique: Research Questions
- What is the long-term retention potential of the keyword technique?
- Why is the keyword technique less effective for learners with lower aptitude?
- Are self-created keywords and images more effective compared to ready-made keywords?
References
Frunza, O., & Inkpen, D. (2009). Identification and disambiguation of cognates, false friends, and partial cognates using machine learning techniques. International Journal of Linguistics, 1(1), 1-17.
Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.