A So$ware tool to help in vocabulary reten5on using: Spaced repe55on
Abstract
International students who are second language learners (SLL) may encounter difficulty
recalling some vocabulary in English. It is known that vocabulary is a principle key for all
language skills and play a pivotal role in the language fluency. Adults learn in a different way
than children. Hence, the use of some strategies may help adults to enhance the learning
process. Considering that Information technologies (IT) are making information more
accessible than ever through various types of means. Therefore, an assistant tool for
memorizing vocabulary that exploits the power of IT means in apply an appropriate learning
technique could enhance the learning's outcome. This assignment will describe the
problem of learning vocabulary in English as a second language (ESL) and will propose an
implementation of the software solution that makes use of an educational practice called:
Spaced repetition to assist the targeted group of adult student in upper levels (Intermediate
to upper-intermediate) overcoming this difficulty.
Background
Although many technology-assisted language learning applications have been developed in
various forms such as web-based, mobile-based learning applications or cross platforms,
yet, more advance language learner may not benefit from them as they may have if they got
the more tailored tool for their more specific needs.
The learning curve is flattening in upper levels of learning as knowing a wider range of
vocabulary is required to achieve the next upper level. This means that lower-level learner
might improve faster than intermediate or upper-intermediate level English learners. This is
because beginner learner may be able to comprehend the basics and the limited amount of
words that around 3000 words (Richards, 2015) in a relatively short time. On the opposite,
acquiring an extensive range of vocabulary may take much longer time to be exposed to
various contexts of larger amounts of vocabulary. The limited range of vocabulary may
make students stuck at the intermediate level. Thus, many other English learning programs
emerged to deal solely with this problem at the intermediate level. Therefore, the problem is
existing, and there are many tries to deal with it. Yet, no software tool – to the researcher's
knowledge- has implemented the spaced repetition strategy in memorizing vocabulary for
intermediate and upper-level English learners.
Spaced repetition is a method in learning that might have a great potential to improve
learning. The basic concept of it can be expressed as "the material that is hard is shown
more often, and material that is easy is shown less often" (Spaced repetition, n.d.). There
are many researchers have implemented spaced repetition method in second language
acquisition (Atkinson, 1972; Bloom and Shuell, 1981; Cepeda et al., 2006; Pavlik Jr and
Anderson, 2008; cited in Settles and Meeder 2016). According to Wahlheim, Maddox, &
Jacoby (2014), spaced repetition has a benefit for long-term retention and enhances
memory.
One example of the existing implementation of this theory is flashcards software called Anki
(https://apps.ankiweb.net) that is general memorizing application. However, the
implementation of flashcards is based on answering questions quizzes or game-based that
may benefit younger and lower levels who may dedicate special time for learning while the
proposed solution is a soft and calm helper tool like an assistant throughout the time. The
key difference that the proposal is a lightweight helper tool come next to the user activity no
time limit for learning; it is all the time process. In versus, the flashcards could be harder for
it to infiltrate easily in the daily activity of advance learner who would wish to memorize
while doing other tasks. Moreover, it is too general to fit the targeted group (the higher
A So$ware tool to help in vocabulary reten5on using: Spaced repe55on
levels of learners) and needing a lot of customization to suit their needs—more details on
the proposed solution on the problem-solution section.
In short, flashcards and other apps may use the same principle (Spaced repetition) but in a
different approach.
The motivation behind this proposal that vocabulary plays a pivotal role and make a huge
difference, especially when this word is a keyword in the sentence. According to Lewis
(2000), Having a considerable number of vocabularies is vital for second language learners.
Moreover, Hedge (2000) has argued that vocabulary may affect fluency more than
pronunciation or grammar does. Thus, I am going to focus on retention of vocabulary
regardless of any other sides that could be important in learning but outside the area of this
proposal that deals with the solo problem.
Problem Specifica8on
There is several researchers have conducted studies on second language learners to
investigate the knowledge of vocabulary (Al-Hazemi, 1993; Alfaleh, 2010; Alsaif, 2011). The
previous studies' results indicate that Saudi learners lack vocabulary. This group is in
conform to the targeted group by this research. Learners encounter a huge number of
vocabularies that need to be learnt. Finding a way to keep track of the most needed
vocabulary and to help to memorize them using spaced repetition approach is the goal of
this proposal.
The problem is that learner should keep effective learning for a long time constantly. This
can be achieved by catering them by a tool that tracks the size of their vocabulary, remind
them by the most needed vocabulary based on their needs, and keep them aware and
motivated by providing statistics on this regard. It considered as a bad learning habit to
cram loads of information all at once. Perhaps they will be all gone so soon. Slow and
constant learning is an advisable approach, and spaced repetition approach enables to
apply such implementation.
Limits of the proposal: This proposed tool is to help exclusively in memorizing. Not helping
in knowing the meaning or the forms of a word. Etc.
Problem solu8on
Generally, learners have different needs, and from different backgrounds, so they will need
more special way related to them personally in learning. Hence, comes the need for a
personalized dictionary that dynamically interacts with the user and helps to memorize the
most needed words. Also, this app intended to play a motivational role beside spaced
repetition feature, and this can be achieved by, i.e. saying the number of words in the
dictionary and provide some statistics on user activity presented in attractive graphs and
this lead to open wide opportunity for UX/UI field.
Technically, the aim is to help learners to enhance memorizing vocabulary by building the
personalized dictionaries that will be sorted by the frequent entry and enable them to revise
a word in all its contexts that been entered.
Example of implementa;on this idea:
▪
Learners input a text which has some words that it might be found difficult to learn.
▪
Learners select some words from the text to add them to their personalized dic;onary.
▪
Adding word that already exist frequently may denote that user finds difficulty remembering
it, so the words will be sorted and classified according to the most and least frequent.
A So$ware tool to help in vocabulary reten5on using: Spaced repe55on
▪
Various tasks that can be added, such sending reminders to learner, will not be random. It
will depend on an algorithm that should be able to detect what learner could not learn or
memorize.
▪
This soOware gets bePer and start to be useful for users by ;me, as it depends on the user
inputs.
▪
Learner shall be able to access and revise a word in all its different contexts that he/she has
come across to compare and enhance learning and memorizing.
▪
Other features can be added to support this idea further, such as create reports and sta;s;cs
and support display interface for wearable devices such as Apple Watch.
The first screen shows the top 3 words that user need to learn.
The user inserts paragraph and clicks on difficult words
shows in yellow
A So$ware tool to help in vocabulary reten5on using: Spaced repe55on
The interface shows the full history of words.
The class of the word "individuality" is important because learner keeping
adding them which indicate it is still unlearnt.
Proposed Interface for wearable devices
A So$ware tool to help in vocabulary reten5on using: Spaced repe55on
Ethical considera8on
Up to the time of writing this report, there will be no personal data need to be
collected from users to build the system, however, if so there will be consideration
of the available code of conduct on the related areas it will be respected and will be
fully followed.
After done building the app, User shall be in full awareness of any privacy issues
may arise like what the application may collect from them, where the information
will be kept, who may be able to see and how to wipe their data off.
Any related rules enforced by Newcastle university in any part of the project
processes will be considered in the appropriate time.
Project planning
In this project, I am taking into account the limitations of time and experience thus I am
putting realistic goals, however, this does not impact the ambitions of the project because I
have divided it into substages. It will start with basic features, and the rest of the features
that give richer experience was postponed to the futuristic plan. The basic structure, as
proposed in this report, expected to be finished by the end of August. Note futuristic plans
has not discussed in this report.
In this project, I preferred Agile for project management as I am working alone, so more
iterative routine is expected and to allow responding to change flexibly. There are priorities
in the project, important tasks implemented first, less critical ones left to the end. There will
safety time margin for any unexpected incidents to mitigate the negative effects. Also, there
will be a time limit for each stage to prevent one process from taking longer than it is
planned, which may impact the whole work.
Evalua8on
The targeted group is huge because English has paramount importance and high priority globally. I
am focusing on interna;onal student, and there are many channels to access their circles online. As
they may interest in enhance their language. So, I plan to receive feedback on the outcome of using
the app. But the quick feedback may not give the true image of the success in this project or not. It
may need longer ;me un;l we have regular users then we may go into measure the impact on them.
However, receiving early feedback may give us some signs too.
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A So$ware tool to help in vocabulary reten5on using: Spaced repe55on
References
AL-falah, K., (2010) The EFL Vocabulary Knowledge of University Level in the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia. Unpublished MA thesis. Swansea University.
Alsaif, A. (2011) Investigating vocabulary input and explaining vocabulary uptake among EFL
learners in Saudi Arabia. Unpublished PhD thesis. Swansea University, Swansea.
Al- Hazemi,H. (1993) Low Level EFL Vocabulary tests for Arabic Speakers. Swansea. Unpublished
Phd thesis. University of Wales.
Hedge, T. (2000) Teaching and learning in the language classroom. Oxford: Oxford. University Press.
Lewis, M. (2000) Teaching collocation: further developments in the Lexical Approach, Hove:
Language Teaching Publications.
Psychology Wiki. n.d. Spaced Repetition. [online] Available at: https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/
Spaced_repetition. Accessed 13 May 2020.
Richards, J. (2015) When Learners Have A Limited Vocabulary Range – Part 1. [online] World of
Better Learning | Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/elt/
blog/2015/10/20/learners-limited-vocabulary-range-1/. Accessed 13 May 2020.
Settles, B., & Meeder, B. (2016) ‘A trainable spaced repetition model for language learning. In
Proceedings of the 54th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics, 1
(long papers), pp. 1848-1858. Available at: https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P16-1174.pdf.
Accessed 13 May 2020.
Wahlheim, C. N., Maddox, G. B., & Jacoby, L. L. (2014) ‘The role of reminding in the effects of
spaced repetitions on cued recall: Sufficient but not necessary’, Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(1), p. 94. Available at: https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4032790/. Accessed 13 May 2020.