Abstract
Preliminary findings indicate that undergraduates' retention of the meanings of technical vocabulary items depends upon at least three attributes associated with the items themselves. The “learnability” of 46 low-frequency relatively technical vocabulary words and their definitions, assessed as percentage of correct responses on a randomly ordered multiple-choice comprehension test, was significantly correlated .45 with familiarity, .32 with comprehensibility and .28 with imagery ratings obtained for the items from two other groups of raters. Comprehensibility and imagery were significant predictors independent of familiarity (partial r = .30 and .26, respectively) and familiarity was a significant predictor independent of the other two (partial r = .44 for both). Learnability of unfamiliar technical terms might be improved by providing some acquaintance with them before explicit instruction, by defining them in simple understandable terms and by using concrete terms high in visual, pictorial or sensory connotations. Further research is necessary, however, before the definitive priority of relationships can be identified.
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