Exercise Types and Word Meaning Remembrance

The present study is an attempt to contribute to the L2 acquisition research through finding an appropriate answer to the question usually asked by both language teachers and learners, namely how to learn vocabulary and how to retain meanings in memory over time. We have chosen to discover the effects of two major types of productive exercises, writing and oral production exercises, on the remembrance of word meanings over time: 24 hours, one week, and one month after learning the vocabulary. For this purpose, two linguistically homogeneous L2 classes received ten sessions of treatment each: in one of these classes, 100 vocabulary items were practiced through controlled writing exercises and the other class practiced the same items through controlled oral exercises. The preliminary results indicate the positive influence of oral production exercises on meaning rememberance over time, i.e., after one month, while the two exercise types did not show any significant differences in their effects on in class vocabulary learning processes.