When introducing new vocabulary, it feels natural to tell students, “Repeat after me!” At The Comprehensible Classroom, this is a habit we have worked hard to break. Now, we recommend a different approach. Instead of prompting students to immediately repeat a new word, we encourage teachers to invite their students to listen and not repeat. Here’s why!
Limiting repeating isn’t the same as limiting speaking
First, let’s be clear: it’s not that we don’t want students to speak. Speaking (or signing) is an important part of communication, so of course we want that for our students! However, repeating a word has little to do with speaking. You see, repeating a word after the teacher is a mechanical act. It involves mimicking sound without necessarily attaching meaning. This is different from true speaking, which requires the learner to select a word from their mental lexicon and use it purposefully to express meaning. When students repeat words before they’ve had a chance to develop a mental representation of what the word means, they’re engaging in what linguists call articulatory rehearsal, not communicative output.
How Repeating Might Hinder Acquisition
Aside from the fact that “repeat after me” isn’t true speaking, it may actually get in the way of language acquisition. Cognitive science tells us that working memory has limited capacity. When students are focused on producing sounds (especially unfamiliar ones!) they use up cognitive resources that would otherwise be available for processing meaning. If the word is not yet meaningful to the student, repeating it may actually delay the process of forming strong mental connections.
Researcher Efthymia Kapnoula concluded: “When a person repeats a word immediately after hearing it, cognitive resources are dedicated to preparing the production of the word and, as a result, these resources cannot be used to deeply encode that word.” (Kapnoula et al., 2023)
"When a person repeats a word immediately after hearing it, cognitive resources are dedicated to preparing the production of the word and, as a result, these resources cannot be used to deeply encode that word."
You see, when students are asked to repeat, they might focus on pronunciation rather than meaning. This is especially true when students are learning a language with unfamiliar sounds or sounds that students have to learn how to produce. Requiring repetition can also lead students to mentally disengage, treating the task as rote instead of meaningful. Some students may experience anxiety if pronunciation is difficult, which reduces their openness to input. And finally, it could impact students’ ability to recall the word later because it wasn’t processed deeply.
In contrast, when students hear a word multiple times; maybe even paired with visual support such as gestures, the written word, or images; it allows their working memory to focus [nearly] exclusively on processing. Kapnoula stated that “if production is delayed [even] for a few seconds, this overlap is avoided, allowing deeper learning and encoding to take place.” (Kapnoula et al., 2023)
What We Recommend Instead
Instead of asking students to repeat, when you introduce a new word we recommend you say it clearly, with expressive voice and gesture. Establish meaning for the word through linked meaning, using translation if possible, and also strategies such as pictures and gestures.
After introducing its standalone meaning, use it in a simple, meaningful sentence. Pause to let students process! Finally, re-use the word often in comprehensible ways as you talk with them. This allows students to internalize vocabulary naturally, through input, not imitation.
References:
Kapnoula et al. study discovered through Neuroscience News.
Original Research:
“Wait long and prosper! Delaying production alleviates its detrimental effect on word learning” by Efthymia C. Kapnoula et al. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience
