春雨直播app

I recently read "The Science of English Vocabulary Learning" (written by Tatsuya Nakata, published by Kenkyusha). One concept that caught my attention was the "Transfer-Appropriate Processing" principle. It apparently means that "the closer the learning situation is to the testing situation, the higher the learning effect will be." For example, if a student learns by writing an English word on the front of a flashcard and its Japanese translation on the back, a test where they see the English word and recall the Japanese translation can be expected to have a high learning effect. Conversely, a test where they see the Japanese translation and recall the English word is said to have a lower learning effect.

This year, I am in charge of a Reading & Vocabulary class for 12th-grade high school students. We have vocabulary tests every time, but I realized that the "learning" and the "test" were not aligned at all. For the students, learning consisted solely of looking at the words and their explanations in the vocabulary book. Almost no students were practicing by writing the English words. The tests did not use the example sentences from the vocabulary book but used different English texts, and the test formats included multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, and word reordering. This reflects the teacher's wish for students to learn various aspects such as the form, meaning, and usage of the words. However, some research suggests that if you try to make students learn too many things at once, they may not master any of them. I wondered if the reason English vocabulary wasn't sticking was due to this mismatch between student learning and teacher testing.

Therefore, as a measure for the final exam, I used a tool called Quizlet to create 220 flashcards from the words appearing in the textbook covered by the test. I wrote the English word on the front and its Japanese translation on the back, making them available for students to use online two weeks before the test. I included 20 of those words in the exam. I used a crossword format where the vertical and horizontal clues were the Japanese translations, and the task was to write the English word indicated by that translation, ensuring that the learning and testing were aligned. I also informed the students of the test format in advance. The effect was enormous. The average score for the 162 students was 16 out of 20 points. Fifty-two students received a perfect score of 20. In a previous test, I had used English definitions instead of Japanese translations for the vertical and horizontal clues, but the students' performance was not good. It may be that the set of an English word and its Japanese translation is easier to fix in the students' brains.

The students taught me that the effects of daily learning are demonstrated in tests that match that learning. I want to continue exploring the "alignment of learning and testing."