Colloquium: Caitlin Rice on "A review of laboratory studies of adult second language vocabulary training"

Caitlin Rice of hte Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, provided the following abstract:

This talk reviews laboratory approaches to teaching second language (L2) vocabulary to adult learners. This review integrates this literature using a framework provided by a modified version of the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM; Kroll & Stewart, 1994). By examining how training methods promote or fail to promote the development of high-quality orthographic, phonological, and meaning representations, and strong connections between these representations, I provide a reconceptualization of the current body of knowledge and highlight gaps in the existing literature.  I review evidence that training methods that only promote L1 to L2 form connections (e.g., massed repetition) are generally not effective, but can become highly effective when paired with methods that also strengthen L2 form to meaning connections (e.g., spaced repetition learning with retrieval practice or semantic elaboration requiring user-generated responses). Finally, I discuss the implications of these findings for researchers and educators interested in improving L2 vocabulary learning outcomes.