Immediate and delayed post-tests after 2 weeks

After hearing the story, students were asked to write a summary of the story in Japanese with the help of the list of words on the board. After having written the summary, the subjects were given a list with the 36 words (in the same order as they had appeared in the story) and were asked to translate them into Japanese. Two weeks later, the participants were again given a list of the 36 words and were asked to translate them into Japanese.

Experiment B: Word-explanation / translation and memorization Procedure

On the day of the experiment, the subjects were given a list with 36 words, corresponding in parts of speech to the 36 words used in Experiment A. The words were explained to the subjects by means of paraphrasing or by simply translating them into English or Japanese. The low and similar pre-test scores (see below) confirm that these words were unfamiliar to the students and that the lists from Experiment A and B were of similar difficulty.

While listening to the explanation, subjects were asked to write down the Japanese equivalent next to each of 36 German words on the list. The explanation / translation of the 35 words took approximately 15 minutes (about 25 seconds per item). After the 36 words had been successfully explained / translated to the subjects and the Japanese equivalents had been written down, the subjects were given 20 minutes (same amount of time as story-telling had taken) to memorize the 36 words by themselves in any way they wanted to.

Post-test and delayed post-test after 2 weeks

Immediately after the 20 minutes given to the subjects for memorizing the 36 words, they were given a new list with the 36 words (in different order) in German and subjects were asked to write down the Japanese equivalents. Two weeks after the first post-test, the subjects were again given a list of the 36 words and asked to write down the Japanese equivalents.

Results

The gains that were made by both groups after two weeks were identical. The story group gained 4.5 words and the list group gained 4.6 words. However, when the gain was divided by the time spent on the lessons, the rate of learning/acquisition for the story group was .23 almost twice that of the list group (Table 1). More words were forgotten in two weeks with the list method than the story method.

Table 1. Mean and S.D. of Pre-, Post-, and Delayed post-test

Story lesson = 20 minutes / List lesson = 35 minutes
Total number of words on both tests = 36
Unknown words in Story = 36 – 1.9 (pretest score) = 34.1
Post test = 14.3 correct, but they knew 1.9. (14.3-1.9=12.4) 12.4/34.1=36%
Unknown words for List = 36 – 2.4 (pretest score) = 33.6.
Post test = 24.4 correct, but they knew 2.4. (24.4-2.4=22) 22/33.6=65%

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