@inproceedings{8634765,
  abstract     = {{Previous research has indicated that in the case of contextual word learning, repeatedly writing a word down, i.e. engaging in a structural elaboration activity, results in better knowledge of both word form and word meaning than engaging in a semantic elaboration activity (Candry, Elgort, Deconinck & Eyckmans, 2017; Elgort, Candry, Boutorwick, Eyckmans & Brysbaert, 2016). Focusing on word form and word meaning at the same time may be an even more efficient strategy for acquiring L2 word form and word meaning, and creating form-meaning mappings. Therefore, the present decontextualized word-learning study contrasted word writing with retrieval practice, which prompts the learners to process the form and meaning of a new L2 item simultaneously.
 
179 native Dutch-speaking EFL-learners in their fifth year of secondary school acquired fifteen new low-frequency English words in one of three conditions: a word writing condition in which the new L2 word was written down repeatedly for 15 seconds, a retrieval practice condition in which the participants were given 15 seconds to retrieve the new L2 word on the basis of its Dutch translation, and a control condition in which the participants were asked to direct their attention to the English-Dutch word pairs for 15 seconds. Form and meaning recall tests were administered immediately after the learning procedure and one week later.

The results indicate that retrieval practice leads to better immediate and delayed form and meaning recall than both the word writing condition and the control condition. While the word writing condition yields superior immediate form recall scores than the control condition, the latter takes the upper hand in the delayed form recall test. Meaning recall is consistently better for words learned in the control condition than for words learned through word writing. The pedagogical implications of these results will be discussed.}},
  author       = {{Candry, Sarah and Eyckmans, June}},
  booktitle    = {{Vocab@Leuven, Abstracts}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  location     = {{Leuven}},
  title        = {{Comparing the merits of word writing and retrieval practice for L2 vocabulary learning}},
  year         = {{2019}},
}