The effect of keyword method on Thai students' English word learning and retention: a case study of grade 6 students at Ban Kudnakeaw school

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of two vocabulary learning techniques. The participants consisted of 16 students with low language proficiency. They were divided into a rote learning group and a keyword learning group, each of eight students. Rote learning involved repetition of target language items, writing down the items, and looking up the meanings from dictionaries. The teacher-students generated keywords consisting of acoustic links, that is L1 words that sounded like L2 target words and imagery links which were the images produced by phrases constructed from the L1 words (keywords). The two groups of participants were in grade 6 and their proficiency was tested by using a translation pre-test consisting of 18 experimental English words used in three class hours (six words each) of the same grammatical category, same length, and of similar frequency of occurrence. The instrument used for data-gathering was a translation test, pre-, immediate, cumulative and 2-week delayed post-tests to evaluate learning achievement of the participants in learning and recalling English vocabulary. The statistics used for the data analyses were means, standard deviations, student error means, and t-test. The learning achievement in the delayed post-test between the students who were taught by rote learning and the keyword method were 7.25 and 8.32 respectively which was significantly different at the 0.05 level.