To sum up Boers’ general conclusions (thread)… (1) It is not clear whether meaning-focused or language-focused work is better for making vocab and patterns stick.

Boers (2021) looks at inductive learning of patterns (guiding learners to work out the pattern/rule) versus deductive (giving the pattern/rule up front). We mentioned the same point below in The Language Teacher Toolkit. amzn.eu/jglHDBO You might expect better memory when more initial effort is put into processing the rule for yourself (‘deep processing’j, but evidence for this is mixed. Takeaway? Giving a rule up front may be just fine (especially for weaker classes).

On the use of glossed words in the margin of a text to enhance later recall of new vocabulary. Teng (2020) found the same. amzn.eu/b0EilBl BTW, glossing at the bottom of an article has been found to be less successful than glossing in a margin. More eye movement needed (diverted attention) and students may just ignore the glossed words anyway.

Unpacking (SLA) articles - Episode 2 - good concise summary of a Michael Long article. Yes, I’d worry too about ‘elaborated input’ with novices or near novices. via @YouTube That conundrum of targeting language rather than content… flooding input with structures/vocab chunks does provide repetition which should be good for memory building, but yes, this comes at the expense of interest.