| Abstract: | Four experiments evaluate the effectiveness of a two-stage mnemonic procedure, the keyword method, for learning foreign language vocabulary. Stage 1, the acoustic link stage, involves associating the spoken foreign word to an English "keyword" that sounds like some part of the foreign word. Stage 2, the imagery link stage, requires the formation of a mental image of the keyword interacting with the English translation. The experiments compare the keyword method with various control procedures for learning a Spanish vocabulary. In all cases, the keyword method proved to be highly effective, yielding in one experiment a final test score of 88% correct for the keyword group compared to 28% for the control group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
