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  • Hi everyone!

  • So today I'm back with another video about second language acquisition research.

  • So what we're gonna talk about today is again, vocabulary

  • 'cause I get so many questions about vocabulary How to review.

  • How I should learn vocabulary.

  • 'cause I know people suffer a lot from this We all know that reviewing is key to retention

  • Retention means to like keep the word in your memory

  • The question for today is: how often should we review vocabulary for long-term retention?

  • In other words, how often should I review so that I never forget again?

  • Actually, researchers have looked into this topic before.

  • Umm trying to see what kind of study intervals would affect retention.

  • So today we're gonna look at a longitudinal research that lasted for 9 years.

  • And see what kind of learning pattern would help long-term vocabulary retention.

  • Without further ado, let's get into the video.

  • This is a longitudinal research that lasted for 9 years.

  • 4 participants were exposed to 300 new words.

  • These 300 words were divided into 6 groups.With 50 words in one group.

  • These six groups were assigned to 14, 28, and 56 days of spacing.

  • At the same time, they are also assigned to 13 or 26 sessions.

  • This is a 2X3 factorial design.

  • After the sessions, the researcher followed up with retention tests 1, 2, 3 and 5 years

  • later, to see how many words these participants remember.

  • So I know the design of this research is a little bit complicated.

  • But let me tell you what the results were.

  • In this research, these people reviewed the vocabulary once in 14, 28 or 56 days.

  • But no matter how often they review, they need to review 7 times.

  • In other words, after 7 sessions, they remember most of the vocabulary.

  • This is a number to aim for.

  • Another result was pretty intuitive.

  • The group of words that were reviewed every 56 days were difficult for the learners to

  • remember since they only encounter these words every 2 months.

  • On the other hand, the learners performed better on the groups that were reviewed every

  • 14 days.

  • They remember more words from these groups.

  • However, the researchers did follow-up retention tests and found out that more vocabulary was

  • remembered from the 56-day groups.

  • The words that were reviewed every 56 days were difficult to learn in the first place

  • but were remembered by the participants longer.

  • To be honest, I didn't expect this result from the research and this is a really interesting

  • finding.

  • In other words, longer intervals resulted in higher recall rate, regardless of the really

  • difficult process of acquisition in the first place.

  • They did really well 5 years later.

  • This is really amazing.

  • So now we're gonna look at the takeaway for the learners.

  • Number 1, as I said, no matter how often you review, 7 session is the number to aim for

  • acquisition, which means that you could review once in 2 days, 3 days, 7 days.

  • It's your choice, but you have to review for at least 7 times to remember a word.

  • Number 2, cramming a lot of vocabulary before exams may seem really efficient.

  • However, long-term memory should be the goal that learners aim for.

  • Repetition has always been emphasized in vocabulary acquisition but in this research, we can see

  • that longer intervals actually result in longer memory retention, which means that you could

  • review once in a very long time, but as long as you keep on doing it, in the long run,

  • you don't forget it anymore.

  • Number 3, if you learn something in a foreign language classroom and remember it for the

  • first five years.

  • In the following 25 years, it is very unlikely that you are going to forget about it.

  • Next time when you plan your review sessions, try to incorporate both short and long intervals.

  • For example, if you're trying to learn a new list, review it more often.

  • Maybe review it once in 3 days or once in a week.

  • After 7 sessions, as we said, 7 sessions is the number to aim for for vocabulary acquisition.

  • So after 7 sessions, you could review maybe once in 2 months or once in 3 months.

  • The goal is to have long-term memory.

  • And longer intervals would lead to longer retention in the future.

  • So when you're designing your learning schedule, don't forget to incorporate both short and

  • long intervals and aim for 7 sessions for vocabulary acquisition.

  • This will definitely help you to have a longer memory of the words you learn.

  • There are many other factors that determine the difficulty of learning a word.

  • Besides frequency that we discussed in this video, other factors may be the word length

  • or the cognateness.

  • So cognates are words in different languages that are similar in meaning and form.

  • For example, time in Japanese is ta-i-mu.

  • It sounds similar and the meaning is the same.

  • This kind of vocabulary is definitely easier to remember.

  • So this is pretty much it for this week.

  • There will be another video about second language acquisition research coming up.

  • So stay tuned.

  • Umm don't forget to subscribe to the channel.

  • Click the like button for this video.

  • Of course, I would put all the reference below in the description box and go check it out

  • if you're nerdy as me!

  • Anyways, thank you for watching and don't forget to let me know your thoughts in the

  • comment section......I gotta go!!

  • Bye bye~

Hi everyone!

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