In this presentation, two presenters will discuss the findings of recent classroom studies involving vocabulary acquisition.
Utility for Rory's Story Cubes in the EFL Classroom (Rick Eller)
Rory's Story Cubes is a game/activity in which nine cubes - adorned with fifty-four symbols - are used to co-construct stories. This half of the presentation will discuss a pilot study conducted in Japan in which three groups of four adult EFL learners used Rory's Story Cubes, along with preselected vocabulary lists to co-construct stories. Protocols established to assess any observable differences on days when the learners were exposed to Rory's Story Cubes, as well as feedback from the participants themselves will also be explored.

The Effects of Semantic Clustering Interference on Elementary School Learners’ Vocabulary Acquisition (Zack Robertson)
The second half of the presentation will discuss Semantic Clustering Interference (SCI) and its effects on vocabulary acquisition at the elementary school level by examining the results of a recent study involving five 5th grade elementary school classes. The study attempted to measure the effects of SCI on the students’ receptive and productive language abilities, comparing classes which learned novel vocabulary items in semantically organized lessons to classes where target words were randomly grouped.

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