The Effect of Vocabulary Use Reminders on L2 English Writing Tasks

Abstract

Transfer of learning is the reason for education. The ultimate goal of teaching is to help learners apply what is studied in one situation to another. For language learning, the purpose of studying grammar and vocabulary is to be able to use that knowledge in a wide variety of contexts. It is, therefore, of interest to determine what can be done to influence transfer of learning. In this study I explored the effects of reminders on the transfer of vocabulary learned in one course to writing tasks in another. The five purposes of this study were to evaluate the effects of the treatment on: (a) the salience of the reminders and on study time, (b) differences in vocabulary learning, (c) the developmental trajectories of language proficiency and writing based, (d) the correctness of the target vocabulary used in a writing task, and (e) the perceived usefulness of the vocabulary study. This study was conducted at a private university in western Japan. The participants (N = 179) were enrolled in a course focusing on vocabulary learning (vocabulary course) and one on genre writing (content course). They were placed into one of four conditions based on entry-level placement tests. These groups received different degrees of reminders. Those in the comparison condition received no reminder (NR) to use the target vocabulary. The three remaining conditions received one of three reminder treatments in the content course before revising required essays: (a) a general reminder (R) to use words studied in the vocabulary course, (b) the same general reminder and a noticing task (R+), and (c) the same general reminder and a task designed to promote target vocabulary usage (R++). Data for this study were obtained using the following instruments: vocabulary self-study logs, Quizlet (2017) and Moodle (2016) metrics, receptive and productive vocabulary tests, a language proficiency test, three measures of writing quality, and individual interviews with 20 of the participants. Prior to conducting quantitative analyses on the data gathered with these instruments, the receptive and productive vocabulary tests, and one measure of writing quality, the JACET writing rubric (Kuru, Masaki, & Kinshi, 2009), were analyzed using the Rasch rating-scale model in order to evaluate the validity and reliability of the instruments as well as to obtain estimates of the participants’ abilities and item difficulties. In addition, the Rasch model was used to check for interrater reliability and rater severity of the scores of the JACET writing rubric. The data were then analyzed using mixed ANOVAs in order to ascertain differences in within-subjects and between-subjects measures. The results confirmed the salience of the reminders, and study time was shown to decrease in stronger conditions. This is a key finding because analysis of the data also indicated that the participants in stronger treatment conditions learned the target vocabulary with the same efficiency as those in weaker conditions despite reporting less study time. Furthermore, the treatments had positive effects on lexical complexity, amount of produced written text, and the amount of correct vocabulary usage in the writing task.