Draft An earlier version appeared in 'Kiyo, occassional papers of Notre Dame Seishin University', Mar 1997. This study focused on the comparative rates of learning, retention and decay of words learned for recognition versus words learned for recall. 60 Japanese learners of English were required to learn 15 words by testing their recall knowledge as they were learning and 15 words to be testing recognition. The words were learned from word cards with specific direction of learning indicated to force learning for recallor for recognition. This was designed to focus the subjects on learning one way or another.
Results show that learning for recognition is faster and suffers from less decay.
A Comparison of the Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Sizes of some Second Language Learners. In this study it was found that one's receptive vocabulary is always larger than the productive but by varying degrees. More basic words were more likely to be known both receptively and productively, but more infrequent words were more likely to be known receptively than productively. Connectionism and Second Language Vocabulary . From there, I will look at some of the limitations of this view and will show the connection with higher cognitive functions.