Barcroft claims that in initial learning, having learners write words (vs. undivided mental effort of memorization) significantly suppresses recall on immediate and delayed post-tests. This is supported by solid research (e.g. Second Language Research 22,4 (2006)). I feel a bit confounded since many effective learners must have used written lists through the ages, as an obvious and satisfactory strategy. Concerning Resource Depletion Output and teaching methodology, is this a critical issue, or is it just an academic caveat on the route to word learning, which in any case requires many encounters, and forms of elaboration? In other words, how should teachers heed this finding? Although he doesn't write it explicitly, Barcroft would appear not to endorse practices such as shadowing, since too much division of resources would occur, depleting vocabulary, or other aspects such as syntax.
Language is an oral skill, inborn in humans. Writing is a partial reflection of spoke language, but yu need the oral language before you can write. It is a chore for even highly literate speakers to encode their knowledge and suppositions from the oral language. In 2nd language learning, making students write down a language they barely know or even know well will impede oral learning. Speech & writing are 2 separate systems.
Dear David Coulson,
Thank you for interesting question.Cognitive exertion or resource depletion is closely related to man's attentional control and action selection mechanisms for performing a task . Notably, Learning an L2 word requires sufficient processing resources in mapping the target word forms into their semantic representations. Forced output such as writing L2 words in sentences -that is copying a L2 word , may exhaust and/ or deplete processing resources otherwise utilized for establishing word form-meaning associations. As you have rightly observed , the RDO- related research findings have often been inconsistent since L2 recall tasks have led to opposing results. In point of fact, areas related to highly abstract mental mechanisms are mostly like this because we are often looking for a black cat in a dark room which does not exist at all.What is needed is the application of intelligently designed research protocols that measure the issue in highly controlled contexts.
R. Biria
While Barcroft's research may be 'solid', it does not mean that the result is replicable. Perhaps it would be a good idea to replicate the study to find out.
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