Vocabulary card learning: Testing multilingual translations and increased semantic processing

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Vocabulary card learning stands out as one of the most efficient methods for memorizing a large number of words in a short period of time. Multilinguals have the possibility to use their multilingual repertoire to their advantage when learning new words, for example in the acquisition of formally overlapping words. This study aims to answer the as-yet unexplored question of whether the use of bilingual translations in vocabulary cards can provide advantages for multilinguals when learning vocabulary even in a linguistically distant language. Furthermore, predictions based on the ‘type of processing – resource allocation’ (TOPRA) model regarding trade-offs through semantic processing are taken into consideration. In this study, traditional vocabulary card learning is compared to two further elaborated learning tasks which included multilingual translations. In a 3 × 3-within-participant design, 72 participants learned 60 Estonian nouns in three conditions: (1) monolingual: one translation in the participant’s dominant language, (2) bilingual: two translations in the participant’s two strongest languages, and (3) multilingual semantic+: one translation in the dominant language including the instruction to retrieve the meaning of the Estonian word in any other known language. The dependent measures were immediate and delayed L2–L1 cued-recall post-tests and efficiency (ratio of learning performance to learning time). The results show that the monolingual condition significantly outperforms the two other conditions in all recall tests. In terms of efficiency, however, the monolingual condition only significantly outperforms the multilingual semantic+ condition. The comparison between the bilingual and the multilingual semantic+ condition shows descriptively (but not statistically significant) better performance for the bilingual condition.