A Comparative Study of the Effects of
Multiple Choice and Sentence Writing
on Junior High School
Students’ Vocabulary Retention
Department of English
National Kaohsiung Normal University
Master’s Thesis
Advisor: Dr. Ching Chi Chen
Graduate: Jing Ting Sun
2008.06
MA3C0206 BRIGITTE MA3C0210 CHELSEA 4A0C0044 COCO
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
This study aims to investigate which of the two types
of
exercises,
multiple
choice(MC)
or original
sentence writing (OSW), help learners gain better
vocabulary retention, and within almost the same
amount of time, which would be more efficient.
Background and Motivation
 Language learners usually find that the lack of
vocabulary impedes the comprehension of L2
materials, or hinders the learners from expressing
themselves(Folse, 2006).
 To many teacher and students, OSW seems to bring
unequaled retention effects because it is a productive
skill which will push to think(Folse, 2006)
 According to Nation’s retention model(2001), there
are two types of retrieval receptive and productive.
 In school of all levels in Taiwan or even all over the globe,
one of the goals language teachers try to achieve is to find
out the most effective way to enlarge the size of students’
vocabulary.
 Among all types of exercises, cloze, sentence writing, MC,
and matching are the popular ones in Taiwan.
 Generally speaking, productive processing brings about
deeper-level metal elaboration than receptive processing,
an hence, generates better retention.
Purpose of the study
This study tries to find out which one of the three
conditions is the most effective and efficient in both long
and short-term memory
3 conditions are listed as follow:
(1) one set of MC
(2) 3 sets of MC
(3) one set of OSW
Research Question
 Which one of the three conditions, one MC, three MCs or one




OSW, has the best retention result in terms of short-term
memory?
Which one of the three conditions, one MC, three MCs or one
OSW, has the best retention result in terms of long-term
memory?
Which type of exercises, MC or OSW, has better ratio of score
to time in term of short-term memory?
Which type of exercises, MC or OSW, has better ration of
score to time in term of long-term memory?
What are the attitudes the subjects have toward the three
exercise conditions?
Significance of the study
 It is hope that the result of the study can significantly
contribute some knowledge to the efficacy of tasks in
vocabulary acquiring, and offer knowledge about students’
opinions on the three exercise conditions.
 The finding in this study may benefit textbook editors in
editing teaching materials for facilitating learning to
acquire new words and could be also beneficial for
language instructors.
Limitation of the study
 No meaningful contexts were presented to the subjects for
fear that when the subjects did the OSW, they might copy
from the example sentences, which would obviously
affect the validity of the study.
 Due to the level of the subjects, Chinese was used in
OSW exercises by the subjects to express their ideas if
they do not know the counterpart in English.
 The retention of the target vocabulary only referred to the
translation of meanings in the current research.
Chapter Two
LITERATURE
REVIEW
Three main aspects of LR
The incremental nature of vocabulary knowledge:
To help the readers understand the fact of vocabulary
knowledge acquisition.
2. Incidental vocabulary learning:
Play a crucial role when it comes to learning or acquiring
a language, whether L1 or L2.
3. Involvement Load Hypothesis:
The psychological cognitive process involved in
vocabulary learning.
The three concepts: Noticing, Retrieval and Generation
1.
Vocabulary Knowledge
1. It is an indispensable component of
all language learning.
2. It is widely recognized that
vocabulary knowledge develops with a
multi-facet fashion.
1. Nation (2001):
 Form: a. spoken
R: What does the word sound like?
P: How is the word pronounced?
b. written
R: What does the word look like?
P: How is the word written and spelled?
c. word parts
R: What parts are recognizable in this
word?
P: What word parts needed to express the
meaning?
1. Nation (2001):
 Meaning: a. form and meaning
R: What meaning does this word form signal?
P: What word form can be used to express this
meaning?
b. concept and referents
R: What is included in the concept?
P: What items can the concept refer to?
c. associations
R: What other words does this make us think of?
P: What other words could we use instead of this
one?
1. Nation (2001):
 Use: a. grammatical functions
R: In what patterns does the word occur?
P: In what patterns must we use this word?
b. collocations
R: What words or types of words occur with this one?
P: What words or types of words must we use with
this one?
c. constraints on use (register, frequency…)
R: Where, when and how often would we expect to
meet this word?
P: Where, when and how often can we use this word?
2. Henriksen (1996):
The knowledge of vocabulary develops in a
hierarchical order.
Three continua to explain vocabulary development:
I. The partial-precise continuum: shows different
levels of declarative word knowledge.
II. The receptive-productive continuum: tells how
much usability one possesses in terms of
vocabulary knowledge.
III. The depth-of-knowledge continuum: involves the
paradigmatic and syntagmatic relation along with
the referential meaning.
Incidental Vocabulary Learning
1. It is an accidental learning of
information with the intention of
remembering that information. Hulstijn,
Hollander & Greidanus (1996)
2. It is a learning of vocabulary as the byproduct of any activity not explicitly
geared to vocabulary learning. Hulstijn
(2001)
Gass (1999)
It has been argued that except for the first few
thousand common words, most of one’s
second language vocabulary is acquired
incidentally through reading.
The benefits of Incidental vocabulary acquisition
1. It offers examples of the target word in the
context.
2. It is pedagogically efficient since the
vocabulary acquisition and reading skill both
used and improved simultaneously.
3. It is more learner-centered so that the learners
can practice in accordance with their learning
speed.
Depth of Processing
The memory trace can be understood as
a by-product of perceptual analysis and
trace persistence is a positive function of
the depth to which the stimulus has been
analyzed. Craik and Lockhart (1972)
A task which asks the participants to work
out the meaning of words produces better
vocabulary retention than another task that
required them to merely cross out certain
letters in the words.
Criticism
The absence of measurement of depth: without
the measurement whereby different levels of
processing can be verified, this model is not
empirically testable. Baddeley, 1978; Eysenck,
1993; Nelson, 1977.
It is hard to predict whether the exercise
with deeper processing would produce
better retention result.
Involvement Load Hypothesis
It is a task-induced involvement load,
motivational-cognitive construct. Laufer
and Hulstijn (2001).
Three basic elements are taken into
account:
1. Need
2. Search
3. Evaluation
1. Need: the motivational, non-cognitive
dimension of the hypothesis.
2. Search: a cognitive dimension of the
hypothesis.
3. Evaluation: a cognitive dimension of the
hypothesis.
Laufer & Hulstijn (2001) proposed that the
three involvement factors may not have the
same weight when evaluating the effect of a
vocabulary exercise.
Noticing, Retrieval and Generation
According to Nation (2001), there are
three significant psychological
conditions related to efficient vocabulary
learning process:
1. Noticing
2. Retrieval
3. Generation
1. The first process encouraging learning is
noticing, that is giving attention to an item.
2. The second condition for effective vocabulary
retention to occur is retrieval, which involves
recall of previously met items.
3. The third factor that helps a ward be
memorized is generation, which is a critical
factor in L1 and L2 learning.
Chapter Three
METHODOLOGY
Methodology
A follow up of Folse’s study (Folse, 2006)
The purpose of the research can be classified into two categories:
The effects resulting from exercise types
to explore the effects on Ss’ vocabulary retention
The students’ attitudes toward the two exercise types
to reveal the Ss’ preferences, evaluations, possible reasons
Subjects
90 EFL students in the second year
Yo-chang Junior High School in Nanzi, Kaosiung
Three different classes with normal class grouping
Including male and female, aged from 14~16
Experiment Design
Three conditions of vocabulary exercises
(one set of MC, three sets of MCs, a set of OSW)
which one has the best retention result in terms of
effectiveness and efficiency for short-term and long-term memory
All of the subjects practiced the same target words
4
4
12
These words shouldn’t
familiar to the subjects
4
Target Words
Do not fall in the range of the basic words announced by the MOE
Multi-word items, like phrases or idioms
Words that could be identified by its suffixes or prefixes
Words with multiple meanings
The length of words fell in the range from 5~7 letters
Grammar categories (part of speech)
The words whose Chinese pronunciation is borrowed from English
counterpart
Vocabulary Assessment
The Pilot Test
To find out how many MCs may be done within the time
for one OSW
One of the three classes joined the pilot test
The number of the subjects was 36
16 words were selected based on a vocabulary assessment
(8 for MC, the other 8 for OSW)
The material was based on the textbooks
Instruments
Practice booklets
To investigate which condition would yield better retention
Questionnaire
To realize the subjects’ attitudes and opinions
Procedure
Picking out possible target words from vocabulary study
lists designed for senior high third graders
Conducting the word assessment to decide on the target
words for the pilot test and the treatment session
Conducting a pilot test to find out how many MCs can
be done within the time for one OSW
Preparing practice booklets
Conducting the pretest
Asking the subjects to finish the practice booklets for
the treatment session
Conducting the posttest to compare the retention
effects on short-term memory
Conducting the delayed posttest a week later to test the
effects on long-term memory and asking the subjects to
fill out the questionnaire
Analyzing the data
Data Analysis
1. To examine effects of task types on short-term and long-term
retention
Quantitative analyses
2. To investigate the Ss’ attitudes toward the two exercise types
The questionnaire
Chapter Four
RESULTS
&
DISCUSSION
RQ 1: Which one of the three conditions, one
MC, three MCs or one OSW, has the best
retention result in terms of short-term memory?
1. Condition 2 outperformed Condition 1. The
reason is that the two conditions are of the same type
of exercise and the target words of the former were
practiced triple times as those of the latter.
2. The retention score of Condition 2 was
significantly better than that of Condition 3.
Condition 3 was believed to induce deep-level
processing, strong evaluation, and productive
generation.
RQ 2: Which one of the three conditions, one MC,
three MCs or one OSW, has the best retention
result in terms of long-term memory?
1. According to the figures of tests of with-in
subject effects, the main effect of exercise type
was not statistically significant.
2. Possible explanation of the result could be that
without enough practice or review of the target
words, as time passed by, the participants forgot
most of the words they had encountered during the
treatment session.
RQ 3: Which type of exercises, MC or OSW, has
better ratio of score to time in terms of shortterm memory?
1. The MC conditions were more efficient than
OSW.
2. The reason for the figures may be that doing
one OSW take much longer time than one MC,
which resulting in the outcome that the ratio of
OSW is lower than that of Condition 1.
RQ 4: Which type of exercises, MC or OSW, has
better ratio of score to time in terms of long-term
memory?
1. There was no significant difference between
Conditions 2 and 3. It can be inferred that with
time passing by, neither MC nor OSW were
more efficient than the other, just like what
happened in Question 2 in the current research.
2. Perhaps not enough practice or no more review
was given between the two posttests led to a
result like this.
RQ 5: What are the attitudes the participants
have toward the three conditions?
1. Both Conditions 2 and 3 would be regarded
as helpful conditions.
2. The
frequency would be counted for
Conditions 1 and 2 both.
Chapter Five
FINDING AND CONCLUSION
Finding
 The research question dealt with the effectiveness to
short-term memory
Condition 2 is the most significantly of three
conditions
 The research question dealt with the effectiveness to
long-term memory.
Condition 3 is the most significantly of three
conditions
 With regard to the ratio score to time :
condition 1 performed the best of all
It could be concluded that MC is a more efficient
tool than OSW in respect of short-term memory
 The responses on the questionnaire:
 Condition 2 > Condition 3 > Condition 1
 As to the preference of exercise types:
 Condition 2 > Condition 1 > Condition 3
 Which condition was the least favored:
 Condition 3 > Condition 1 > Condition 2
Conclusions
 OSW is claimed to have better mental processing
qualities, which yield more elaborate, durable, and
stronger memory traces.
 Fill-in-blank exercises could have a deep level of
processing, because the target words practiced with fillin-blank are also processed semantically.
 Practicing 3 MCs was favored for its effectiveness and
efficiency.
Implications
Theoretical
Precisely predicting
effectiveness of a certain type
of exercise is much more
complicated than what the
theories mentioned in the
current research has conceived.
Pedagogical
MC is more efficient than
OSW, and MC benefits both
teachers and students in term
of time.
The type of exercise that is
preferred over OSW, and
therefore, most students would
finish this type of practice
willingly.
 Though OSW is a time-consuming, it is a useful tool if the
goal of vocabulary is more than memorization.
 Most of junior high school students seldom have the chance
to practice creating their own sentences.
Exercise type of school
Exercise type of this study
grammar-centered
content-centered
 As the result of the current research showed that
repetition is important for maintaining retention.
It can be inferred that the retention link will be
effectively fortified if the repetition is embedded in a
task which induce high-level mental processing.
Suggestions for Further Research
 Further researcher can conduct experiments on students
of high levels to find out whether the outcome is the
same for subjects of different levels.
 Researchers may investigate the effect of task for
different time intervals to know the effect of different
types of repetition on retention.
 Further researchers may apply more sets of exercises to
compare their effectiveness and efficiency between
conditions.
 In the current research, only MC and OSW were
compared. Further studies may investigate different
combinations of types.
Q&A
According to your own learning experience, do you
agree with the author’s vocabulary exercise types?
According to your teaching experience, do you agree
that these three exercise types can help students to
memorize vocabulary?
If you are interested in this research,
you can visit this website…
http://www.keithfolse.com/