2019 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
The Effectiveness of Contextualized and Decontextualized Computer Assisted Vocabulary Study
| Project/Area Number |
16K16871
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| Research Institution | Saitama University |
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Principal Investigator |
ヒューズ リアンダー 埼玉大学, 教育機構, 准教授 (80513861)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2016-04-01 – 2020-03-31
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| Keywords | CALL / Vocabulary |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Both intuition and theory suggest that learning new vocabulary within a larger context should lead to more effective acquisition of those vocabulary compared to decontextualized study. However, previous research has either shown no difference between methods or an advantage for decontextualized study. The researcher hypothesized that the reason past studies have failed to find an advantage for contextualized vocabulary learning is because of flaws in their experimental design. Therefore, the researcher designed a computer-based experiment and measurement system that aimed to circumvent those flaws and detect even small advantages for one method over the other. The results of the experiment showed a small but significant difference in favor of contextualized vocabulary study (Hughes, 2020). The results are meaningful on both a practical and theoretical level. Practically, the method supported by the results may help inform learners and educators so that they can improve their vocabulary learning/teaching approaches. Theoretically, the results lend support to the Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH), which posits that the effectiveness of a vocabulary learning task depends on the level of task-induced involvement it engenders.
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| Remarks |
The SciVo Scientific Vocabulary Learning System is a CALL system for vocabulary learning that was developed as part of this research. It continues to be used by biology students at Saitama University.
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