Can Colors, Voices, and Images Help Learners Acquire the Grammatical Gender of German Nouns?...

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Can Colors, Voices, and Images Help Learners Acquire the

Grammatical Gender of German Nouns?

Journal: Language Teaching Research

Manuscript ID: LTR-14-0056

Manuscript Type: Full Research Article

Keywords: mnemonics, vocabulary retention, German noun gender, dual-coding, paired associates

Abstract:

Knowledge of lexical items is arguably the most essential aspect of being able to communicate in a foreign language (Richards, 2000). Many studies have examined effective strategies for retaining the meaning of foreign words, but studies investigating the effectiveness of different methods for the retention of essential grammatical features of those words are

unfortunately fewer. This study investigates whether memorizing the gender of German nouns concomitantly to their meaning results in a decreased ability by undergraduate native speakers of English to remember noun meaning and whether a mnemonic approach to retaining the grammatical gender of German nouns is effective. In possibly the largest study of its kind (N = 283), the effectiveness of several mnemonic devices (colors, voices, images, and a combination of these) is investigated for the retention of noun gender in German. The sole use of images simultaneously coding for noun meaning gender information led to the best observed results, as indicated by scores on two post-tests. The use of images seems to be a promising mnemonic technique for helping learners remember the gender of German nouns, while at the same time not

significantly compromising their ability to remember noun meaning. The results of the present study have possible implications for German materials development and teaching, and for Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) in general.

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Language Teaching Research

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Running head: CAN COLORS, VOICES, AND IMAGES HELP? 1

Abstract

Knowledge of lexical items is arguably the most essential aspect of being able to communicate in

a foreign language (Richards, 2000). Many studies have examined effective strategies for

retaining the meaning of foreign words, but studies investigating the effectiveness of different

methods for the retention of essential grammatical features of those words are unfortunately

fewer. This study investigates whether memorizing the gender of German nouns concomitantly

to their meaning results in a decreased ability by undergraduate native speakers of English to

remember noun meaning and whether a mnemonic approach to retaining the grammatical gender

of German nouns is effective. In possibly the largest study of its kind (N = 283), the effectiveness

of several mnemonic devices (colors, voices, images, and a combination of these) is investigated

for the retention of noun gender in German. The sole use of images simultaneously coding for

noun meaning gender information led to the best observed results, as indicated by scores on two

post-tests. The use of images seems to be a promising mnemonic technique for helping learners

remember the gender of German nouns, while at the same time not significantly compromising

their ability to remember noun meaning. The results of the present study have possible

implications for German materials development and teaching, and for Computer Assisted

Language Learning (CALL) in general.

Keywords

Mnemonics, vocabulary retention, German noun gender, dual-coding, paired associates

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CAN COLORS, VOICES, AND IMAGES HELP? 2

Can Colors, Voices, and Images Help Learners Acquire the Grammatical Gender of German

Nouns?

“Every noun has a gender [in German], and there is no sense or

system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned

separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has

to have a memory like a memorandum-book.” (p.272)

Mark Twain, A Tramp Broad

Introduction

The learning of individual lexical items is perhaps the most important aspect of learning a

foreign language. As Richards (2000) notes, “no amount of grammatical or other type of

linguistic knowledge can be employed in communication or discourse without the mediation of

vocabulary” (p. xi).

A vast number of studies have focused on the acquisition of word meaning (De Groot &

Keijzer, 2000; Ellis, 1995; Hulstijn, Hollander, & Greidanus, 1996; Rott, Williams, & Cameron,

2002; Vidal, 2011). The techniques investigated vary from the use of paired associates, word

lists, incidental vocabulary learning and the use of dictionaries to more complex methods such as

the keyword method (for a detailed review of methods, see Nation & Webb, 2011). Of the

aforementioned methods, two are of special interest and relevance to the topic and research

discussed in this paper: the keyword method and the paired-associates method.

The keyword method is what is called a mnemonic. A mnemonic is a technique or device that

aids the recall and retention of information and can be either verbal or visual in nature (Solso,

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MacLin, & MacLin, 1995). This method, developed by Atkinson (Atkinson, 1975), is perhaps

the most widely used mnemonic technique in second language vocabulary acquisition (Shapiro

& Walters, 2005) and has been extensively researched for the acquisition of word meaning

(Avila & Sadowsky, 1996; Sagarra & Alba, 2006; Wang & Thomas, 1995). In the keyword

method, a word in the learner’s L1 (the keyword) that is pronounced or spelled similarly to the

L2 target word is represented through an image and semantically linked to another image

representing the concept of the L2 target word (Hulstijn, 1997). As an illustrative example, the

Portuguese word for ‘father’ is pai (pronounced like the word pie in English). An English

speaker learning Portuguese could therefore picture their father wolfing down a large pie in order

to help them memorize the meaning (and pronunciation) of the Portuguese word pai. Despite its

vividness, the keyword method is only rarely used in the instruction of foreign languages due to

its limited application to concrete words that can be perceived visually and to the inherent

difficulty in finding a suitable L1 keyword for each L2 lexical item (Hulstijn, 2001).

Paired-associate learning is a simpler and less laborious technique, commonly involving the

use of word/flash cards. According to Nation (2001), paired-associate learning is (a) the learning

model we know most about and (b) the best way to meet the goal of establishing a critical mass

of vocabulary as early as possible in language learning. In this technique, cards have the L1

word/sentence on one side and the L2 translation on the other. Since the communicative

approach made its way into language teaching several decades ago, paired associates have fallen

out of favor, with some researchers claiming they are more suitable for beginning students

(Nation, 2001) or not as effective as vocabulary learning through reading (Krashen, 1989).

Despite the clear benefits of exposing learners to extensive reading (such as the consolidation of

previously learned lexical items and grammatical structures), vocabulary learning through paired

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associates can, nonetheless, be a very effective technique for learning word meaning (Nation,

2001) and has been shown to be resistant to attrition (Hulstijn, 2001). It has been suggested that

flashcard learning, which is quite suitable for the use of paired-associates, may transfer to normal

language use (in which words are used productively and in context) and can be a useful activity

(Elghort, 2007; Webb, 2009).

Despite the large number of vocabulary studies up to this date focusing on the retention of

word meaning, studies investigating the concomitant retention of grammatical features of lexical

items are considerably fewer (Pelicer-Sanchéz & Schmitt, 2010; Schmitt & Meara, 1997; van

Zeeland & Schmitt, 2013). Schmitt (1998) warns of what he considers to be a problem in the

field of applied linguistics, namely that most studies in vocabulary acquisition have focused on

investigating the acquisition of a single meaning of a word to the detriment of a wider range of

lexical knowledge, which encompass, among other features, grammatical aspects of words, such

as part of speech, noun gender, and derivational morphology. Nation and Webb (2011)

corroborate Schmitt’s (1998) view by arguing that “raising awareness of unknown words or

features of words that are unknown increases the potential for learning” (p. 8).

In order to fill a gap in the current applied linguistics literature with regard to retaining noun

meaning simultaneously to other essential features of these nouns, the present study investigated

the retention of noun meaning in German concomitantly to noun gender. Gender, a grammatical

feature of all German nouns, is not only pervasive in German, but also essential to the

construction of even the most basic of sentences in this language. The present study makes use of

three mnemonics for helping participants retain the gender of the eighteen German nouns

employed: images, colors, and sounds. Noun gender in the present study is learned in the context

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of English/German paired-associates and results suggest that the use of images, in particular, can

be an effective tool for retaining noun meaning and gender in German.

Background

Noun Gender

In many of the world’s languages, noun gender is an important linguistic category and one that

plays a crucial role in their grammatical system. Among these languages, some make use of

grammatical genders, which have no real biological or semantic basis (e.g., French, Spanish,

Russian, Portuguese, and German). Some languages present a higher share of nouns whose

grammatical gender is transparent through superficial marking1, as in Spanish, Russian, and

Portuguese, whereas others (e.g., French, Norwegian, Dutch, and German) have a larger share of

nouns opaquely marked for gender, with the result that a learner cannot usually tell the

grammatical gender of the noun simply by attending to its spelling or pronunciation. For learners

of these latter languages, correctly acquiring and establishing gender agreement (be it through

determiners, articles, or adjectives) is a problematic task (Carroll, 1989; Franceschina, 2005).

German is a language that makes substantial use of case to mark syntactic relations, what is

mostly done by means of word order in English and Romance languages such as Italian and

Portuguese. In German, case marking is indicated primarily by the articles accompanying nouns,

and only occasionally by making morphological changes (by means of adding suffixes) to the

nouns themselves (Kempe & MacWhinney, 1998). In both scenarios, knowledge of noun gender

is essential for learners to communicate clearly and fluently in German. Errors in gender

assignment comprise a substantial portion of the errors committed by even advanced learners of

German (Rogers, 1987).

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Given evidence that noun gender is stored together in the noun’s entry in the mental lexicon

(Dixon, 1986; Salamoura, 2007) and given the crucial role of gender agreement in the

grammatical system of German, I would like to propose that meaning and gender should be

taught concomitantly, especially for nouns with opaque gender marking (the main focus of the

current study). The simultaneous learning of noun meaning and gender may, however, lead to an

increase in cognitive load and methods that can reduce such load should be investigated.

Hypermedia, Cognitive Load, and Dual-Coding Theory

The use of various forms of either off-line or on-line (automatic and instantaneous) hypermedia

annotations, such as the use of images, animations, coloring, and sounds has the potential to

enhance the learning of grammatical features of lexical items, such as noun gender,

concomitantly to word meaning. Al-Seghayer (2001) notes that “a variety of glosses for words in

various modalities, such as printed text, graphics, dynamic video, and sound might have differing

capacities to facilitate vocabulary acquisition and retention” (p. 203).

In employing hypermedia annotations, one must be careful not to overload learners’ cognition

and working memory. Van Merriënboer and Sweller (2005) note that “working memory load

may be affected … by the manner in which the tasks are presented” (p. 150). Visual working

memory and auditory working memory are independent from each other, but if multiple sources

of information are presented through the same channel (auditory or visual), that channel might be

overloaded and see a decline in performance (Mayer, 2009; van Merriënboer & Sweller, 2005).

Lastly, excessive cognitive load can also be caused by what is termed a “redundancy effect”,

which involves the processing of redundant information in the input. This fact seems to

contradict a commonly held belief that the higher the amount of input available to learners, the

more they seem to benefit from this (Jones & Plass, 2002).

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A theory that deals with the processing capacity of working memory and which is suitable as

a theoretical framework within which hypermedia and the use of mnemonics can be investigated

is dual-coding theory. This theory (Paivio, 1986, 2010) suggests that information can be encoded

in memory through two different, albeit interconnected, processing systems: a verbal one (e.g.,

graphical forms of words and their pronunciation) and a visual one (environmental sounds,

colors, and visual objects, among others). Verbal and non-verbal representation can be activated

either separately or together (Paivio, 2010, p. 208). In the context of language learning, words

high in imagery (concrete nouns, for example) are retained and recalled more frequently than

words that are lower in imagery (abstract nouns, for example), since they have a stronger non-

verbal representation. According to dual-coding theory, the best results are observed when the

verbal and visual systems are linked together, leading to an additive memory effect of dual

coding (Paivio, 2010). Therefore, the use of mnemonics might hold some promise for the

retention of noun gender.

The Use of Mnemonics for the Retention of Noun Gender in Previous SLA Studies

Despite the established effectiveness and usefulness of mnemonics such as the keyword method

for vocabulary learning, and although noun gender is a central component of the grammatical

system of many of the world’s languages, a review of the literature indicates that only six studies

to this date have examined the potential of mnemonics towards retention of noun gender.

A tabular summary of these studies, as well as their findings and most relevant aspects, is

provided in Table 1.

[Insert Table 1 here]

Given the limited number of studies to date investigating the potential of mnemonics for the

leaning of noun gender in German and the prevalence of studies investigating the sole acquisition

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of noun meaning without consideration of the concomitant retention of essential features of those

nouns, the present study sought primarily to determine the shorter-term effectiveness of colors,

voices, and images for the retention of the grammatical gender of German nouns. Such retention

is a necessary step in being able to apply knowledge of grammatical gender in the active

production of German sentences.

The Present Study

The present study aimed to investigate how images, colors, and voices fared in the shorter term

(up to two days) based on participants’ short exposure to the eighteen nouns employed in the

experiment, with no claims as to whether genuine, longer-term acquisition occurred.

To my knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the effect of different voices on the

recall of grammatical noun gender.

Research Questions

RQ1. Does having to retain the gender of German nouns in addition to their meaning make it

significantly harder for participants to recall the meaning of those nouns?

RQ2. Does a mnemonic approach enhance the simultaneous recall of both meaning and gender

of German nouns when compared to the commonplace non-mnemonic approach in which only

articles (A) are used?

Methods

Participants. Three hundred and twelve undergraduate students at a public university in

the Midwest of the USA voluntarily participated in the study. All participants were enrolled at

the time of the study in the same Academic English course for first-year undergraduate students

and were not learners of German as a foreign language. In a similar fashion to Nyikos (1987) and

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Arzt (2013), convenience sampling was employed, making the results of these three studies more

directly comparable. The students came from sixteen different classrooms and special care was

taken to randomly assign each of the classrooms to a different condition. Pre-test results and

background information of participants in all seven experimental can be found under

Comparability of Intact Classes and Reliability of Tests.

Unfortunately, the data of twenty-nine participants had to be ignored for the purposes of the

study, leaving a total of two hundred and eighty-three participants for analysis2.

Materials. Eighteen German nouns were selected for the study. Ten of the nouns were

concrete and eight of the nouns were abstract. Six nouns were feminine (Kirche, Tasse, Zeitung,

Zukunft, Wirtschaft, Gefahr), six were masculine (Sessel, Bleistift, Knabe, Bericht, Vergleich,

Anteil) and six were neuter (Fenster, Spielzeug, Fahrrad, Ergebnis, Wachsen, Mitglied). The

nouns were selected by the researcher and a colleague based on their knowledge of German and

only nouns with no more than three syllables (in fact, all selected nouns but one had two

syllables) and which were not cognates with their English equivalents were included. The

restriction of number of syllables was implemented so as to render it less likely that participants

would memorize a word simply based on its graphical form.

Experimental Conditions. Seven different conditions were employed in the study. Each

of the sixteen classrooms was randomly assigned to one and only one of the seven conditions.

Therefore, each participant in the study was only exposed to one of the seven experimental

conditions (Table 2). Participants in all seven conditions saw the same eighteen German nouns

appear on the screen, one at a time and in conjunction with their English translation (paired

associates). The conditions differed, however, with regard to the manner in which noun gender

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was indicated and whether an image was used to additionally represent noun meaning. The seven

conditions are described in Table 2.


The seven conditions in Table 2 can also be visualized in Appendix A.

Assessment Tasks. Two versions of an assessment sheet were used: (a) a pre-test sheet,

used for determining whether participants already knew any of the words in the study (Appendix

B) and (b) two post-test sheets for assessing participants’ retention of what they had learned

within their specific condition. Since participants in the MEAN condition were only required to

retain noun meaning (serving as the control group for RQ1), two different versions of the post-

test sheets were created (Appendix C and Appendix D).

Procedures. The study was conducted during normal class time. After voluntarily

agreeing to participate in the study and signing the consent forms, participants in each treatment

(apart from MEAN condition, in which no word gender had to be retained) were first introduced

to the concept of grammatical noun gender through several examples, and subsequently informed

of how each of the three German grammatical genders would be represented within their

respective condition. After clarifying eventual questions, the researcher proceeded with the

study. The nouns were shown on the screen in exactly the same order across all conditions and

this order differed from the order of the words in both the pre-test (Appendix B) and the post-test

sheets (Appendix C or D), so as to minimize the effect of word order on scores. The pre-test and

the two post-tests were made available at different times and participants in all seven conditions

followed the following procedure during the experiment:

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Pre-Test: Participants were given three minutes to provide the English translation for the

eighteen words they would learn in the experiment (Appendix B) and provide some background

information.

1st slide show: Participants in each condition watched each of the eighteen German nouns

appear once on a large classroom screen, one after the other and in a different order from both

the pre-test and the subsequent post-tests. Each German word and their respective English

translation remained on the screen for fifteen seconds.

Non-scored practice: Participants were given four minutes to complete the non-scored

practice sheet relative to their treatment (Appendix C or D). The purpose of this non-scored

practice was simply to allow them to activate the words just seen on the screen. This sheet was

then put away.

2nd slide show: After taking the non-scored test, participants immediately watched the same

slide show for a second time, under the exact same conditions as the 1st slide show. This was

done in order to allow participants to further strengthen their retained knowledge of the words.

1st post-test (PT1): Participants were given three minutes to complete the PT1 sheet relative to

their experimental condition (Appendix C or D). This sheet was then put away and the first day

of the experiment was declared over. The participants were informed that in two days the

researcher would come back into the classroom for a short activity with the class.

2nd post-test (PT2): Two days

3 after their exposure to the eighteen German nouns, participants

were instructed to complete the PT2 sheet relative to their treatment condition (Appendix C or

Appendix D), this time without seeing the words again on the screen.

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Dependent variables. Four dependent variables were defined in order to investigate

research questions 1 and 2 above. The list of the operationalized dependent variables can be

found in Table 3.


Comparability of Intact Classes and Reliability of Tests. Before analyzing the

responses, it was necessary to verify that the seven experimental groups drawn from intact

classes were sufficiently comparable to each other. By only including in the analysis data from

students who scored 0 points on the pre-test for noun meaning (a conservative decision),

comparability of the groups with regard to previous knowledge of the target words was ensured.

A one-way ANOVA (α = .05) showed no significant effect of the number of foreign languages

spoken, F (6,282) = 1.0, p = .425. Lastly, given that none of the participants was identified as an

outlier within their respective condition in both post tests (PT1 and PT2) with regard to either

meaning or meaning + gender scores, the data of all two hundred and eighty-three participants

were kept for the purposes of analysis.

A Spearman rank-order correlation was calculated between the PT1 and PT2 results for each

of the seven conditions. It is to be expected that the ranking of participants in a given condition

throughout the two post-tests be somewhat stable. The Spearman-rho measures (Table 4) showed

that for all conditions, the correlation between PT1 and PT2 was statistically significant (p < .01)

and ranged from moderate to high.


Scoring. The two post-tests were scored with regard to the number of correct responses

provided. Each correct response was awarded one point, leading to minimum score of 0 and a

maximum score of 18. The scoring of all responses was done manually by the researcher and

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triple checked for accuracy. For all conditions, a meaning score was calculated. For six of the

conditions (apart from the MEAN condition), meaning + gender scores were also calculated

(Table 3 above). These scores served as the basis for investigating RQ1 and RQ2.

Statistical Analysis. In order to investigate RQ1 and RQ2, univariate analyses of

variance (ANOVAs) were performed with a Bonferroni adjustment (α = .05 / 4 = .0125) in order

to control for the multiple tests performed and therefore maintain an overall experiment-wise

Type 1 error rate of .05. A Levene’s test (Levene, 1960) was performed for each analysis to

check for the assumption that the variances in each group were equal (i.e., homoscedasticity

assumption). In case of equal variances, a Tukey HSD post-hoc test was employed for

subsequent pairwise comparisons, whereas in the case of unequal variances the Games-Howell

post-hoc test was employed (Green & Salkind, 2003).

For all tables presented containing descriptive statistics, the control condition for the research

question being analyzed will be marked in bold for readers’ ease of reference.

Results

RQ1. Does having to retain the gender of German nouns in addition to their meaning make it

significantly harder for participants to recall the meaning of those nouns?

Figure 1 shows the distribution of average meaning scores across all seven conditions.

[Insert here Figure 1. Meaning scores on PT1 and PT2 across all seven conditions.]

The descriptive statistics for the meaning scores on PT1 and PT2 are provided in Table 5.


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A significant main effect for treatment was found for recall of word meaning in Post-Test 1, F

(6,276) = 10.41, p < .001 and Post-Test 2, F (6,251) = 10.42, p <.001. To investigate RQ1, the

meaning scores of participants in the MEAN condition were compared to the meaning scores of

participants in the other six conditions, in which participants were required to memorize the

grammatical gender of the German nouns in addition to their meaning (Table 6).


We notice that after watching the eighteen words on the screen twice, participants in the

MEAN condition (who only saw the English translation of the German words and were not

required to retain any gender information) performed statistically significantly better than

participants in every condition in which gender had to be learned in addition to meaning, with

the exception of the Image condition (α = .0125). With regard to the meaning scores on PT2

(two days later), we observe a similar scenario, in which all conditions involving additional

gender memorization, apart from the Image (I) condition, performed statistically significantly

worse than the MEAN condition. The difference in meaning scores for Post-Test 1 and Post-Test

2 between the MEAN and Image conditions were not statistically significant (p = .466 and p =

.622, respectively).

RQ2. Does a mnemonic approach enhance the simultaneous recall of both meaning and gender

of German nouns when compared to the commonplace non-mnemonic approach in which only

articles (A) are used?

The focus of the second research question is on how participants in the various conditions fared

with regard to learning both meaning and gender of the eighteen German nouns on PT1 and PT2.

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Figure 2 shows the distribution of average meaning + gender scores across six experimental

conditions (MEAN condition excluded).

[Insert here Figure 2. Gender + Meaning scores on PT1 and PT2 across six experimental

conditions (MEAN condition excluded)]

In Table 7 we find the descriptive statistics for the meaning + gender scores for six

experimental groups (with the exception of the MEAN condition), on Post-Test 1 and Post-Test

2.


A significant main effect for treatment was found for the concomitant recall of a given noun’s

meaning and gender in Post-Test 1, F (5,236) = 17.88, p <.001, and in Post-Test 2, F (5,217) =

21.39, p <.001. In order to answer RQ2, the meaning + gender scores of participants in the

article (A) condition were compared to the meaning + gender scores of participants in the other

five conditions in which participants were exposed to mnemonic techniques for retaining the

gender of the German nouns and also their meaning.


The results of the pairwise comparisons for PT1 and PT2 in Table 8 for the meaning + gender

scores indicate that participants in the Image (I) group showed a statistically significantly higher

ability to recall the meaning and gender of the German nouns in comparison with the Article (A)

control group (p < .001 in both cases). As a matter of fact, participants in the Image (I) group

managed to recall the meaning and gender of over five additional words on PT1 and over six

additional words on PT2 when compared to the Article (A) group, leading to a relative advantage

of approximately 57% and 106%, respectively. The difference in recall for participants in any of

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the other mnemonic groups, when compared to participants in the Article (A) group, was not

statistically significant, although participants in the CVAI group did show a practical advantage

over the Article (A) group in both PT1 and PT2.

Discussion

The results for RQ1 indicate that all six conditions in which noun gender had to be learned

together with noun meaning led to a practical decreased ability to recall and retain the meaning

of the eighteen nouns on Post-Test 1 and Post-Test 2. This finding corroborates those of

Desrochers et al. (1991) to some extent. However, this decreased ability varied considerably

across conditions. While five of the conditions led to a statistically significant decrease in

meaning retention, this was not the case with the Image (I) condition. Therefore, the use of real

images for the coding of grammatical gender and for the representation of noun meaning, as

employed in this study, seems to warrant the concomitant teaching and learning of grammatical

noun gender and meaning in German.

With regard to the concomitant retention of meaning + gender (RQ2), the Image (I) condition

was the only mnemonic condition that led to a statistically significantly higher ability (α =

0.0125) to recall and retain noun gender and meaning simultaneously when compared with the

Article (A) group, although the (CVAI) condition also led to a practical advantage that almost

approached statistical significance. Despite the fact that the (CVAI) condition made available to

participants four different devices for helping them recall noun gender, this condition led to

results inferior to the Image (I) condition, which only made use of images.

This last point finds explanation in multimedia theory, which argues that processing of

redundant or excessive cross-modal information can lead to cognitive load and therefore a

decrease in performance (Mayer, 2009; Sweller, 2004).

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Contrary to previous findings that the use of color for coding gender information can be

effective in aiding transfer of input to learner intake (Kohler, 2009), the Color (C) condition did

not manage to outperform the Article (A) condition. Also contrary to the belief held by Arzt

(2013) that “while images may help the learner understand the meaning of a new word, a picture

alone may not be particularly helpful in learning specific elements of form and grammar” (p. 18),

images do seem to be quite helpful in aiding retention of at least the grammatical gender of

nouns, if employed in a similar fashion as in the present study. Whereas Arzt (2013) employed

drawings to represent the meaning of the German nouns and employed gendered silhouettes that

were disconnected from the drawings to represent noun gender, the present study employed

lively, real images to represent the meaning and gender of the nouns.

The use of voices as a gender-coding mnemonic, investigated, to the best of my knowledge,

for the first time in the context of the present study, led to the lowest meaning + gender scores

overall. A likely explanation for this finding is that from all the mnemonic devices investigated,

voice was the only one still predominantly verbal in nature (with the others being visual), failing

therefore to provide the additive memory effect usually observed with dual-coding.

A feasible explanation for the observed superiority of the image (I) condition over all others

for the concomitant retention of noun gender and meaning is that, contrary to other mnemonic

conditions in which the mnemonic device only coded for gender, both meaning and gender

information were contained in the same visual stimuli in the Image (I) condition. By representing

grammatical gender (a linguistic concept) through an image of a man or woman (in the case of

masculine and feminine nouns), an abstract concept such as grammatical gender was

conceptually linked to the much more tangible and familiar notion of natural gender/sex. As

noted previously, this initial advantage of using images failed to hold completely for the (CVAI)

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condition, most likely due to the high cognitive load caused by the presence of three redundant

mnemonic devices, plus the article.

In sum, the Image (I) condition was the only condition that did not lead to a statistically

significant decreased capacity to retain noun meaning. In addition, participants in the Image (I)

condition consistently outperformed participants in the Article (A) and all other conditions for

the retention of both gender and meaning of the German nouns. These results suggest that the use

of images for meaning and gender representation of German nouns can have practical

applications for materials development, language teaching, and CALL.

Implications for Materials Development, Language Teaching and CALL

In view of the results of the present study and given the centrality of noun gender to the

grammatical system of German, I would like to recommend that the grammatical gender and

meaning of German nouns be taught concomitantly, and that such teaching be done with the aid

of images whenever paired-associate learning can be employed. If the effect of the sole use of

images for coding gender and representing meaning is indeed as strong as the results of the

present study suggest, materials developers might also consider including such images in their

German as a foreign language/Deutsch als Fremdsprache (DaF) materials. Possible applications

for the use of images are in-class/out-of-class vocabulary training through paired-associate

exercises or by means of pictorial glossing of nouns during online reading activities through

hypermedia annotation. Contrary to the keyword technique employed in some previous studies

on grammatical gender and on vocabulary learning in general, the use of images as seen in the

present study is considerably more practical and easier to implement. Whereas keywords are

highly dependent on learners’ L1 (Hulstijn, 2001), the mnemonic use of images as described in

the current study do not depend on any phonetic association with a word in the learner’s L1.

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The creation of online image banks for German nouns is a tool worth exploring. Online

CALL materials may choose to readily integrate these agreed-upon pictures into their programs

(through the use of hyperlinks to the noun image bank, for instance). As a matter of fact,

facilitated reading in German could be implemented through a system similar to that of the

online dictionary and reading platform Lingro4, in which users can submit a webpage address

containing a text in one of several available languages (including German). Through this

platform, users are able to click on any word in the original text is see its English translation,

while having words they click on automatically added to a personal flashcard-based paired-

associate word bank for later review.

It would most likely be easier than one thinks to find suitable images (this is certainly not the

case with the keyword-method, which usually requires quaint pictorial associations). For

instance, the German noun for apple is “Apfel” and it is masculine. The readers are invited to try

using Google Images or online image repositories such as Shutterstock5 to search for “man

holding apple” or “boy eating apple.” Many of the retrieved pictures could potentially be used to

represent the meaning of the word “Apfel” in a picture bank for German nouns, while at the

same time indicating that it is a masculine noun. The same applies to abstract nouns, although

these would require more careful selection given the higher chance of unclarity (or ambiguity) in

meaning representation in images depicting an abstract concept. On the other hand, if paired

associates are employed, any eventual unclarity in exact meaning representation can be

compensated by having the target words accompanied by their translations in learners’ L1, as in

the present study. Teachers of German as a foreign language can especially make use of images

in their teaching and teach their students how to create individualized word banks making using

of paired associates and images.

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Limitations and Future Research

One limitation of the study is its focus on the passive recall of the meaning of German nouns. In

other words, participants were required to recall the English translation of German nouns, instead

of having to produce the German nouns themselves based on their English translation (active

recall). Although passive recall is higher in the form-meaning link hierarchy than passive

recognition or simply choosing the meaning of an L2 word from a list of options (Laufer, Eder,

Hill, & Congdon, 2004), the effectiveness of the investigated techniques must still be

investigated with regards to active (productive) knowledge of noun gender and meaning.

Another limitation of the study is the number of words that participants were required to

recall, which was the same as in the Artz (2013) study. It is possible that memorizing the

meaning and gender of eighteen nouns did not lead to as much cognitive load as would be the

case had a higher number of nouns been employed.

Although not exactly a limitation of the present study per se, it must be noted that the

application scope of using images for mnemonically coding both gender and meaning may be

mostly applicable to building a large initial lexicon, being thus more appropriate for less

advanced learners, as is the case with paired-associate learning in general.

Future studies should investigate how participants in the different conditions would fare with

regard to retention of the nouns over a time period longer than two days. Since participants were

only exposed to each noun for thirty seconds in total (fifteen seconds during PT1 and fifteen

during PT2), a two-day interval until the second post-test was deemed appropriate for the current

study. Nevertheless, further exploration of the topic should assess retention of gender and

meaning in the longer term, since retention over a broader time interval is more indicative of

actual learning and acquisition.

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Lastly, it would be interesting to examine the extent to which the results of the present study

would hold in studies investigating other languages opaquely marked for gender (e.g.,

Norwegian, Welsch, and Dutch) and employing a fully experimental design.

Conclusion

Effective ways to retain the grammatical gender of nouns simultaneously to their meaning is still

a largely under-researched area, despite the importance of grammatical noun gender for the

successful learning of numerous foreign languages. The current study aimed to contribute to this

research area by investigating the effect of colors, voices, and images on the retention of German

noun gender. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study that investigated the effect of

voices on gender acquisition. The results indicate that the sole use of images is the most effective

way to help learners concomitantly learn the gender and meaning of German nouns. The amount

of new material retained through images is significantly higher than in the commonplace

approach in which participants are only exposed to articles as a way of coding for noun gender.

Consequently, the sole use of images has practical potential in the area of German as a Foreign

Language/Deutsch als Fremdsprache (DaF) and can be directly employed and encouraged by

teachers of German. The use of colors or voices, on the other hand, does not seem to provide any

benefits to the learning of grammatical gender in German when compared with the commonplace

use of definite articles.

The findings of the present study will hopefully contribute to the scarce literature on the

acquisition of grammatical gender through mnemonics and hopefully encourage further

exploration of the topic. By encouraging the use of images for the coding of noun gender and

meaning in German, teachers may make the task of learners of German as a foreign language,

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such as Mark Twain, a little less daunting and reduce the need for learners to have “a memory

like a memorandum-book” in order to learn the grammatical gender of German nouns.

Notes

1. The great majority of masculine nouns in Spanish end in -o and of feminine nouns end in –a,

for example, as well as the adjectives agreeing with those nouns.

2. These participants were not considered during analysis for one of the three following reasons:

(a) they were non-native speakers of English, (b) they already knew the meaning of at least

one of the German words used during the study (as assessed by means of a pre-test and

questionnaire) or (c) they did not pay enough attention during the study.

3. Given the current study’s focus on retention and not on learning per se, a second post-test

with a two-day interval was deemed appropriate, especially given the short exposure time

participants had to each of the eighteen nouns (thirty seconds each, in total).

4. www.lingro.com

5. http://www.shutterstock.com/

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Appendix A

The seven experimental conditions

(C) Condition

ZUKUNFT – FUTURE

FENSTER – WINDOW

BERICHT – REPORT

(A) Condition

DIE ZUKUNFT – THE FUTURE

DAS FENSTER – THE WINDOW

DER BERICHT – THE REPORT

(MEAN) Condition

ZUKUNFT – FUTURE

FENSTER – WINDOW

BERICHT – REPORT

(V) Condition

ZUKUNFT – FUTURE

FENSTER – WINDOW

BERICHT – REPORT

(CVAI) Condition

DIE ZUKUNFT – THE FUTURE

DAS FENSTER – THE WINDOW

DER BERICHT – THE REPORT

(CVA) Condition

DIE ZUKUNFT – THE

FUTURE

DAS FENSTER – THE

WINDOW

DER BERICHT – THE

REPORT

(I) Condition

ZUKUNFT – FUTURE

FENSTER – WINDOW

BERICHT – REPORT

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Appendix B

Pre-Test

Your name:

Your gender:

Your age:

Your group number:

Number of foreign languages you speak with at least a basic conversational command:

Instructions: Please translate each of the following German words into English, if you know it. If

you don’t know it, please leave it blank. Thank you for participating in this study!

German Word English Translation

Fenster

Spielzeug

Fahrrad

Kirche

Tasse

Zeitung

Sessel

Bleistift

Knabe

Ergebnis

Wachsen

Mitglied

Zukunft

Wirtschaft

Gefahr

Bericht

Vergleich

Anteil

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Appendix C

Post-Test 1, Post-Test 2 and Delayed Post-Test for the MEAN condition

Your name:

Your gender:

Your group number:

Instructions: In the table below, please write the corresponding English translation of each

German word. If you do NOT remember the English translation for some German words, please

leave them blank.

German Word English Translation

Kirche

Anteil

Bericht

Mitglied

Zeitung

Bleistift

Wachsen

Tasse

Knabe

Gefahr

Sessel

Vergleich

Fahrrad

Wirtschaft

Fenster

Zukunft

Spielzeug

Ergebnis

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Appendix D

Post-Test 1, Post-Test 2 and Delayed Post-Test for all conditions expect the MEAN condition

Your name:

Your gender:

Your group number:

Instructions: In the table below, please write in the second column the code used with the

German Word in the slides and in the third column the corresponding English translation of each

German word. If you do NOT remember the code and/or the English translation for some

German words, please leave them blank.

Gender codes:

M – MASCULINE NOUN

F – FEMININE NOUN

N – NEUTER NOUN

German Word Gender Code English Translation

Kirche

Anteil

Bericht

Mitglied

Zeitung

Bleistift

Wachsen

Tasse

Knabe

Gefahr

Sessel

Vergleich

Fahrrad

Wirtschaft

Fenster

Zukunft

Spielzeug

Ergebnis

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Tables

Table 1. Previous studies investigating the use of mnemonics for noun gender retention

Study /

Aspect Desrochers

(1981)

Nyikos

(1987)

Desrochers,

Gélinas, &

Wieland,

(1989)

Desrochers,

Wieland, &

Coté (1991)

Kohler

(2009) Artz (2013)

Target

language

French

(with English

translation)

German

(with English

translation)

German

(with French

translation)

German

(with English

translation)

German

(with English

translation)

German

(with English

translation)

Subjects N = 20 N = 135 N = 96 N = 68 N = 82 N = 62

Number of

words

48 nouns

(both

genders,

paired

associates)

45 nouns

(all three

genders,

paired

associates)

40 nouns

(masculine

and feminine

only, paired

associates)

36 nouns (all

three

genders,

paired

associates)

21 nouns (all

three

genders,

paired

associates)

18 nouns (all

three

genders,

paired

associates)

Mnemonics Mental

imagery

Colors

Drawings

Keyword

(Image)

Modified

Keyword

(Image)

Same as

Desrochers,

Gélinas, &

Wieland,

(1989)

Colors

Colors

Drawings

Gendered

Silhouettes

Details

Group1:

Was asked to

mentally

picture each

noun,

accompanied

by the image

of either a

man or

woman.

Control:

Free to use

any

technique.

Group 1: A

drawing

represented

noun

meaning. *

Group 2: No

drawing, but

nouns were

colored in

either of

three

different

colors for

gender.

Group 3: Combination

of 1 and 2

above

Control: Simply

memorized

the paired

associates.

Group 1: Memorized

only noun

meaning,

through

provided

keywords.

**

Group 2:

Memorized

noun

meaning and

gender,

through

provided

modified

keywords.

***

.

Control 1: Memorized

meaning

only, freely.

Control 2: Memorized

meaning and

gender,

freely.

Group 1: Memorized

noun

meaning and

gender,

through

provided

keywords.**

Group 2: Memorized

noun

meaning and

gender,

through

provided

modified

keywords.

***

Group 3

Memorized

noun

meaning and

gender

without

keywords,

but were told

to imagine

either a man,

woman, or

swimming

pool for

gender.

Control: Freely

memorized

meaning and

gender.

Group1:

Was asked to

retain the

gender of the

German

nouns

through

color-coding.

Masculine,

feminine, and

neuter

articles were

shown in

blue,

red/pink, and

black,

respectively.

Control: Was asked to

internalize

the gender of

the German

nouns, but all

articles

appeared in

black.

Group 1: Nouns

appeared in

blue (m),

pink (f), or

green (n) and

were

accompanied

by a

drawing*

representing

the noun.

Group 2: Nouns

appeared

together with

the silhouette

of either a

man (m),

woman (f), or

baby (n) and

were

accompanied

by a drawing

representing

the noun.

*

Control: l

Nouns were

accompanied

by a drawing

representing

them and

were colored

black.

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Results

Group 1 recalled noun

gender

significantly

better than

Control group.

Group 3 (drawing

+ color)

achieved

significantly

better results

for gender

recall. Group

1 performed

the worst of

all four

conditions

with regard

to gender

recall.

Group 2 (modified

keyword)

showed a

significant

advantage

over the

control

groups for

both meaning

and gender

recall, but

performed

significantly

worse than

Group 1 for

meaning

recall. Group

1 (meaning

only through

keyword), on

its turn,

performed

better than

Control 1 (meaning

without

keyword).

Groups 2 and 3 (which

employed a

gender

mnemonic)

performed

significantly

better than

Group 1 and

Control group for

gender recall.

Differently

from

Desrochers,

Gélinas, &

Wieland,

(1989),

however,

Group 1 (keyword)

did not

perform

significantly

better than

the Control

group (free

strategy) for

meaning

recall.

Group 1 managed to

recall the

gender of the

nouns

significantly

better than

the Control

group.

No

significant

difference

was detected

among the

three groups

for gender

recall.

* These drawings simply depicted the meaning of the noun and were not based on a keyword.

** This is the standard keyword method, employed for meaning recall.

*** In this modified keyword method, participants were asked to also imagine either a woman, a man,

or a swimming pool (in case neuter words were also employed) interacting with the keyword-

based image for feminine, masculine, and neuter nouns, respectively.

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Table 2. Experimental conditions and the number of participants per condition (N = 283)

Condition Gender Meaning # Participants

C

Coding: Color

Masculine = blue

Feminine = pink

Neuter = green

Paired associate n = 33

A

Coding: Article

Masculine = Der

Feminine = Die

Neuter = Das


MEAN None Paired Associate n = 41

V

Coding: Voice

Masculine = male voice

Feminine = female voice

Neuter = genderless

voice


CVA

Coding: Color, Voice,

Article

Masculine = blue, male

voice, Der

Feminine = pink, female

voice, Die

Neuter = green,

genderless voice, Das

Paired Associate n = 47

I

Coding: Image

Masculine = male

Feminine = female

Neuter = none (just

concept being

represented)

Paired associate + Image n = 38

CVAI

Coding: Color, Voice,

Article, Image

Masculine = blue, male

voice, Der, male image

Feminine = pink, female

voice, Die, female image

Neuter = green,

genderless voice, Das,

just concept being

represented

Paired associate + Image n = 50

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Table 3. Dependent variables in the study and their operationalization

Dependent variables Operationalization

Meaning Score PT1 / Meaning Score PT2

Total number of nouns correctly translated to

English on PT1 and PT2 (RQ1)

Meaning + Gender Score PT1 / Meaning + Gender

Score PT2

Total number of nouns whose grammatical gender

and translation were correctly provided on PT1 and

PT2, respectively (RQ2)

Table 4. Spearman-rho correlations between PT1 and PT2 for each experimental condition

Condition

Correlation of Meaning + Gender

Scores

C 0.784 *

A 0.861 *

MEAN 0.805 * (meaning only)

V 0.806 *

CVA 0.819 *

CVAI 0.878 *

I 0.929 *

* Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.

Note: C = Color; A = Article; MEAN = Meaning only; V = Voice; CVA = Color, Voice, Article; CVAI = Color,

Voice, Article, Image; I = Image.

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Table 5. Descriptive statistics for the meaning scores on PT1 and PT2 across all seven

experimental groups

Experimental Condition Meaning Scores

PT 1 PT2

Color (C)

M

(SD)

n = 33

12.39

(3.71)

n = 31

8.52

(4.19)

Article (A)

M

(SD)

n = 31

12.61

(3.76)

n = 30

9.83

(5.19)

Meaning (MEAN)

M

(SD)

n = 41

15.98

(2.56)

n = 35

14.06

(3.42)

Voice (V)

M

(SD)

n = 43

10.88

(3.97)

n = 36

8.14

(4.53)

Col + Art + Voice (CVA)

M

(SD)

n = 47

11.17

(3.52)

n = 43

8.16

(3.93)

Col + Art + Voice + Image (CVAI)

M

(SD)

n = 50

12.46

(4.11)

n = 45

9.57

(4.31)

Image (I)

M

(SD)

n = 38

14.61

(3.60)

n = 38

12.37

(4.21)

Table 6. Post-hoc tests for meaning scores on PT1and PT2

Time of Test

Post-Hoc Tests for Meaning Scores

Pairwise

Comparison

Mean

Difference

98.75% CI Sig. Cohen’s d

(Effect size)

Post-Test 1

(Games-

Howell)

MEAN - C

3.58

[.87, 6.30]

<.001*

1.12

MEAN - A 3.36 [.54, 6.18] .002* 1.04

MEAN - V 5.09 [2.53, 7.65] <.001* 1.52

MEAN - CVA 4.80 [2.52, 7.09] <.001* 1.56

MEAN - CVAI 3.52 [1.04, 5.99] <.001* 1.02

MEAN – I 1.37

[-1.14, 3.88] .466 .43

Post-Test 2

(Tukey HSD)

MEAN - C 5.54 [1.94, 9.14] <.001* 1.45

MEAN - A 4.22 [.59, 7.86] .002 * .96

MEAN - V 5.92 [2.45, 9.38] <.001* 1.47

MEAN - CVA 5.89 [2.57, 9.22] <.001* 1.60

MEAN - CVAI 4.48 [1.19, 7.77] <.001* 1.15

MEAN – I

1.68 [-1.73, 5.11] .622 .44

Note. An asterisk (*) indicates that the mean difference is statistically significant at the 0.0125 level.

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Table 7. Descriptive statistics for the meaning + gender scores on PT1 and PT2 across six

experimental groups (MEAN condition excluded)

Experimental Condition Meaning + Gender Scores

PT 1 PT2

Color (C)

M

(SD)

n = 33

9.24

(4.75)

n = 31

5.13

(3.73)

Article (A)

M

(SD)

n = 31

9.13

(4.18)

n = 30

5.80

(4.04)

Voice (V)

M

(SD)

n = 43

6.95

(4.63)

n = 36

4.56

(4.01)

Col + Art + Voice (CVA)

M

(SD)

n = 47

7.66

(4.00)

n = 43

4.40

(3.16)

Col + Art + Voice + Image (CVAI)

M

(SD)

n = 50

11.78

(4.10)

n = 45

8.84

(4.73)

Image (I)

M

(SD)

n = 38

14.39

(3.58)

n = 38

11.97

(4.29)

Table 8. Post-hoc tests for meaning + gender scores across six conditions on PT1 and PT2

Time of Test

Post-Hoc Tests for Meaning + Gender Scores

Pairwise

Comparison

Mean

Difference

98.75% CI Sig. Cohen’s d

(Effect size)

Post-Test 1

(Tukey HSD)

A - C

-.11

[-3.63, 3.40]

1.00

-.02

A - V 2.17 [-1.14, 5.49] .245 .49

A - CVA 1.46 [-1.78, 4.72] .659 .36

A - CVAI -2.65 [-5.86, .56] .069 -.64

A - I -5.26 [-8.67, -1.86] <.001* -1.35

Post-Test 2

(Tukey HSD)

A - C .67 [-2.79, 4.13] .987 .17

A - V 1.24 [-2.09, 4.58] .814 .30

A - CVA 1.40 [-1.81, 4.62] .690 .38

A - CVAI -3.04 [-6.23, .14] .020 -.69

A - I -6.17 [-9.47, -2.88] <.001* -1.48

Note. An asterisk (*) indicates that the mean difference is statistically significant at the 0.0125 level.

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Figures

Figure 1. Meaning scores on PT1 and PT2 across all seven conditions.

Figure 2. Gender + Meaning scores on PT1 and PT2 across six experimental conditions

(MEAN condition excluded)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

C A Mean V CVA CVAI I

Average

Meaning Score

Condition

Time

of Test:

PT1

PT2 (two

days later)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

C A V CVA CVAI I

Average

Meaning + Gender Score

Condition

Time

of Test:

PT1

PT2 (two

days later)

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Can Colors, Voices, and Images Help Learners Acquire the Grammatical Gender of German Nouns?...

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