The Moderating Effect Of Retrieval Practice On Concreteness Effect In Primary School Students’ Vocabulary Learning

Vocabulary learning is of great significance to grade three primary school students,whose reading comprehension,expression and writing all depend on the understanding and mastery of vocabulary.The concreteness effect of vocabulary indicates that abstract words are more difficult to understand and process than concrete words.In recent years,many studies have proved that retrieval practice is one of the effective ways to learn vocabulary.However,previous studies have only used concrete words as experimental materials.For abstract words,it is unknown whether the retrieval exercise can also promote vocabulary learning.As more and more retrieval practices are proposed,further research is needed on how to better apply this learning strategy to realistic teaching.The study aims to explore the influence of different learning strategies on the learning effect of different part-of-speech vocabulary,so as to help students choose better vocabulary learning strategies.The study involved 162 third-grade students and its experimental program was designed based on previous studies.Participants were asked to use different learning strategies—— repetition learning,fine processing,retrieval practice—— to learn words of different parts of speech.After learning,the results of vocabulary learning after using different learning strategies were compared through a real-time test.In study 1,through the mixed experimental design of three learning conditions(repeated learning,refinement,retrieval practice)and two types of vocabulary(abstract words,concrete words),it was found that there is a significant interaction between parts of speech and learning conditions..The correct rate of concrete words in the retrieval practice group was lower than that in the repeated learning group and the refinement learning group,while the correct rate of abstract words was higher than that in the repeated learning group and the refinement learning group.There was a significant difference in part of speech between repeated learning group and refinement learning group.Although this difference also existed in the retrieval exercise group,the difference in part of speech was smaller than that in the other two groups.It shows that the retrieval exercise can improve the learning efficiency of abstract words to some extent and adjust the concrete effect of vocabulary.In study 2,on the premise that the retrieval exercise is beneficial to the vocabulary learning of third-grade primary school students,we further explored whether there is an interaction between the part of speech and the retrieval type,and which type of retrieval can promote the vocabulary retention of the third-grade primary school students.It was found that there was no significant interaction between the part of speech and the retrieval type,and the low retrieval group had higher accuracy than the high retrieval group for both concrete and abstract words.The results of this study indicate that the retrieval practice have a certain regulative effect on the concreteness effect of vocabulary.For the third-grade students abstract vocabulary learning,retrieval practice is more beneficial.At the same time,the more difficult retrieval exercises work better.The results of this study are instructive for for primary school students’ vocabulary learning.