Link a new word to a sound-alike keyword (L1 or English) and a vivid image combining the keyword and the meaning: ‘wheat’ → ‘we eat’ → an image of people eating a field. Teach the technique once (~20 minutes); learners apply it themselves.
Procedure
- Choose a word.
- Learners find a sound-alike (Uzbek, Russian or English).
- Build a striking image joining sound-alike and meaning; learners make their own.
- Demonstrate once with the class; not every word suits it.
- Optional: number pegs (1–10) as a demonstration.
Sources (as given)
Bower (1972); Atkinson (1975) American Psychologist (vol. 30, not 3, Claude). Bower’s image-instruction study: recall from ~33% to ~80%.
Research context (Claude)
- Strong short-term effects for receptive recall (Atkinson & Raugh 1975), but some studies show faster forgetting at long delays (Wang, Thomas & Ouellette 1992) and little help for productive use or collocation.
- Use it for hard-to-remember concrete words, then move the word into retrieval and use.
Connections
Spaced retrieval is the best-supported technique · How many new words per lesson - working memory limits · Ten paper activities for recycling vocabulary sets