Examining the redundancy effect in a multimedia presentation on retention of French vocabulary
by
Norehan Zulkiply
Nur Assyifaa Abdul Rahman
Faculty of Cognitive Sciences and Human Development
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
Abstract
The present study examined the effect of redundancy in the multimedia presentation on retention of French vocabulary. In the experiment, 40 undergraduate students who had been identified as having a low level of knowledge of the French language (determined through a prior-conducted pre-test) were asked to learn a series of French words using either one of two types of multimedia presentation: AN (animation and narration) or ANT (animation, narration and on-screen text). Results of an independent t-test performed on the post test scores showed that both the AN and ANT groups performed significantly better in the post-test than in the pre-test. Nevertheless, the ANT group showed a higher increase in retention performance, indicating that the additional multimedia elements used in the ANT presentation had significantly improved the retention of French vocabulary. This result was consistent with the information delivery hypothesis but was not in accordance with the redundancy principle. The present finding could provide insights to learners and educators of alternative methods of learning and teaching foreign languages (such as French) which can enhance memory retention.
Keywords: Redundancy effect, multimedia presentation, visual channel, auditory channel, memory retention
