Abstract:
Building upon the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001) which claims need, search, and evaluation are effective factors in vocabulary-focused tasks, this study investigated the effectiveness of memory retrieval vs. dictionary use. The tasks given to three groups of learners induced need given that understanding the unknown words in the tasks were necessary for task completion. Search was only induced for group 1 who had to look up the unknown words in a dictionary. Groups 2 and 3, who were given the meanings of words, did not experience search. Evaluation was induced by a subsequent gap-filling task that required group 2 to retrieve the words’ forms (productive retrieval) and group 3 to retrieve the meanings of words (receptive retrieval) from their memory. The results of comparing the groups based on vocabulary post-tests indicated that productive retrieval was superior to receptive retrieval and both were superior to dictionary use.