Abstract
We report on the design and evaluation of a flashcard application, enhanced with emotional binaural narration to support second language (L2) vocabulary learning. Typically, the voice narration used in English vocabulary learning is recorded by native speakers with a standard accent to ensure accurate pronunciation and clarity. However, a clear but monotonous narration may not always aid learners in retaining new vocabulary items in their semantic memory. As such, enhancing textual flashcards with emotional narration in the learner’s native language can foster the retention of new L2 words in episodic rather than semantic memory as greater emotive expression reinforces episodic memory retention. We evaluated the effects of binaural emotive narration with traditional textual flashcards on L2 word retention (immediate and delayed) in laboratory experiments with native Japanese-speaking English learners. Our results suggest that the learners were able to retain approximately 60% more L2 words long-term with the proposed approach compared to traditional flashcards.
Highlights
Vocabulary is fundamental to English language learning as its lack impedes languagerelated activities, such as conversing and multi-media content comprehension (Nation 2006; van Zeeland and Schmitt 2013)
We designed narrations to memorize English words in the emotionally rich episodic memory and not semantic memory, and we described the method of producing the narration
The correct answer rate after one week under the proposed approach increased to about 50% in this experiment compared to 30% in experiment 1
Summary
Vocabulary is fundamental to English language learning as its lack impedes languagerelated activities, such as conversing and multi-media content comprehension (Nation 2006; van Zeeland and Schmitt 2013). A learner has to encounter the language repeatedly in daily micro-times, and mobile language learning devices are becoming important. The number of mobile language learning studies has been increasing annually (Hwang and Fu 2019), and it has been proved that these applications can enable the learner to improve their language skills (Hwang and Wu 2014). To learn new English words with these mobile devices, learners generally memorize words while listening to the pronunciation in online dictionaries The vocalization is adequate for a learner’s verification of his/her pronunciation of already-known words, it is not sufficient for understanding and memorizing new words (Wright et al 2013)
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