The mnemonic keyword method: The effects of bidirectional retrieval ...

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M. Wyra et al. / Learning and Instruction 17 (2007) 360e371 363 of themselves as imagers. The complete set of AMI items is shown in Appendix 1. Reliability analysis showed a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89 with all items having high item-total correlations. To prepare students for the imaging questionnaires they listened to a fragment of Dahl’s (1982) book ‘‘The Twits’’ and were asked to think about what they ‘‘saw in their mind’’ when listening to the story. Students were not aware that VVIQ and AMI would follow. Based on paired rank classroom achievement scores students were randomly assigned to two groups, the standard keyword group and the keyword retrieval group. Students participated on six occasions (see Table 1). Occasion 0 provided training and practice in use of the keyword method. The next two sessions, Occasions 1 and 2, involved revision of use of the method, then learning of the 22 SpanisheEnglish wordedefinition pairs at 20-s pace and then an immediate bidirectional recall test (Tests 1 and 2 in Table 1). This was designed to make the acquisition of word-meaning pairs as powerful as possible, within the limits of the time available. Occasions 0, 1 and 2 were conducted in small groups of between five and eight students. The three delayed testing sessions (Occasions 3, 4 and 5) occurred once each week for the next 3 weeks. All sessions were of the same duration for both the standard group and the retrieval group. Twenty eight concrete two- and three-syllable nouns were chosen for this study. Six words were used as instruction/ practice words, with the remaining 22 words being used as target words in the learning/testing part of this study. Care was taken to ensure that all the words were new for the students, first through consultation with teachers and then through pilot testing with students in a parallel Spanish program in a nearby school. The training instructions for students were prepared as booklets that were studied by students under the guidance of the researcher. The scripts in the booklets were adapted from those described by Lawson and Hogben (1998). Using Lawson and Hogben’s (1998) elaborated version of encoding, three main conditions were imposed on the process of linking the image of definition and the image of keyword into the interactive image. These conditions were (1) there are only two images in the interactive pictures; (2) the image of the definition has to be bigger than the image of the keyword image; and (3) if possible, the interactive image should be funny or unusual. The scripts were supplemented with three posters that contained graphical illustration of the key steps in the encoding (IN) and in the two directions of retrieval (OUTf for forward recall training, OUTb for backward recall training) uses of the keyword procedure. The standard keyword group used only the IN poster and the keyword retrieval group was shown all three posters. For both the standard and retrieval groups, the keyword generating and image generating steps were explained using the Spanish word camarera (waitress) and possible keywords and interactive images, and desirable qualities of the images were discussed. Students in both groups practised immediately on two new words (jacal, grossella) and then standard group practised encoding with another three new words (tomada, mancha, cazador), with students in the standard group having time to discuss the possible keywords and images throughout the training session. Students in the retrieval group were given additional training in how to use the keyword procedure to retrieve bi-directionally (forward and backward). With the assistance of the ‘‘OUT’’ posters (OUTf and OUTb), they practised the retrieval of all the training words jacal and grossella) and practised encoding and retrieval of three new words (tomada, mancha, cazador). For forward retrieval the OUTf poster identified a set of steps, starting with examination of the FL word for presence of a keyword, making a search for images involving the keyword that had the characteristics emphasised as being desirable during the keyword method training, and scanning the image generated to identify the most prominent component of the image, which is expected to be the definition. In the case of backward retrieval the OUTb poster steps began with a search for any images of the definition. The next steps Table 1 Training, learning and testing procedures OCCASION STANDARD RETRIEVAL 0 Keyword method training (encoding) Keyword method training (encoding) Bidirectional retrieval training 1 Recap of first session (occasion 0) Recap of first session (occasion 0) Learning 22 SpanisheEnglish wordedefinition pairs Learning 22 SpanisheEnglish wordedefinition pairs Test 1 Test 1 2 Learning words again Learning words again Test 2 Test 2 3 Test 3 Test 3 4 Test 4 Test 4 5 Test 5 Test 5
364 M. Wyra et al. / Learning and Instruction 17 (2007) 360e371 involved looking for interactive images that had the characteristics emphasised as being desirable during the keyword method training, selection of the less prominent component of the image that represented the keyword, and generation and selection of the FL word. All training materials were retrieved by the researcher at the completion of each training session. In the next session, immediately after a discussion and a revision of the procedures used in the first training session, students in both groups learned 22 new pairs of Spanish word e English definitions using the provided keywords. The target word content was presented in booklets, with one Spanish word e English definition and the English keyword per page, e.g. camarera, waitress, keyword e camera. This learning session was paced by the researcher so that students had 20 s to study each page. At the end of the period of learning students were given the written immediate recall test, following a 5-min period of free talk that was not related to the keyword method. The order of words on the immediate recall test was randomized, as was the selection of words for forward (FWR) and backward recall (BWR), with the restriction that equal number of two- and three-syllable words were in both FWR and BWR sections of the test. The recall tests on Testing Occasions 1 and 2 were conducted in the small groups that were used during training and learning. For Testing Occasions 3, 4 and 5 testing was done in the students’ classrooms as whole classes, due to the need to minimize disruption of school days and to simulate the regular classroom environment. The order of words was the same on all tests. The results of testing were not made available to students until after the final testing occasion. The students’ responses on both forward and backward recall were scored on a 0e1 scale. A zero was scored for missing or incorrect responses, a score of 1 was given for conservatively judged correct Spanish words (in backward recall) and definitions (in forward recall). 2.3. Multilevel analysis When dealing with multilevel data such as the data in this study, the appropriate procedure is to formulate multilevel models, ‘‘which enable the testing of hypotheses about effects occurring within each level and the interrelations among them’’ (Raudenbush & Bryk, 1994, p. 2590). Consequently, in this study, two-level models were hypothesized to enable the testing of hypotheses about the factors influencing forward recall (FWR) and backward recall (BWR). The hierarchical linear modelling program (HLM) (Raudenbush, Bryk, Cheong, & Congdon, 2000) was used for this analysis. As a method for analysis of growth in nested designs, HLM is argued by Bryk and Raudenbush (1992, p. 133) to provide significant advantages over a technique such as repeated measures analysis. HLM provides explicit modelling of student growth that can describe the pattern of both within-student change and the effects on that of betweenstudent characteristics such as teacher or school level variables. In addition, HLM can consider the interactive effects across these levels (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992). The multilevel analysis is argued by Bryk and Raudenbush to overcome the problems associated with conflation of individual and group effects. Multilevel models are also less restrictive in their assumptions than the more conventional repeated measures analysis of variance procedures. Of particular moment for longitudinal classroom research, where student attendance is often variable, is the flexibility of HLM in its treatment of the spacing of observations and of missing data. Two separate models were specified, one for FWR and the other for BWR. It was initially hypothesized that student recall was influenced by within-student factors (occasion of testing and learning) and between-student factors such as gender, ability to make images and treatment (see Table 2). The models proposed can be denoted in equation form as follows. Level-1 model ½YŠ ij ¼ b 0j þ b 1j ðOCCASIONÞ 1ij þ b 2j ðLEARNINGÞ 2ij þ r ij Level-2 model b 0j ¼ g 00 þ g 0gj W 0gj þ u 0j b 1j ¼ g 10 þ g 1gj W 1gj þ u 1j b 2j ¼ g 20 þ g 2gj W 2gj þ u 2j ð1Þ where Y ij is the FWR (or BWR) score pupil i at occasion j.
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