Examined the effect of an imagery-based study technique, called the "hook," on the acquisition of French article–noun pairs. 40 undergraduates with some background in French as a 2nd language studied a list of items under imagery elaboration or under rote rehearsal instructions. Under each type of instruction, half the Ss were asked to use the peg words learned prior to the experiment, whereas
... [Show full abstract] the remaining half were not asked to use them. When the English translation equivalents were presented as retrieval cues, recall was substantially better under imagery than under rote instructions. The use of mnemonic peg words had a slight detrimental effect on recall, regardless of the type of instructions received. It is concluded that rote repetition, as prescribed in language textbooks, is not as effective as imagery elaboration for learning French article–noun pairs. (French abstract) (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)