“Acronyms can improve retention and recall besides fostering effective communication with academic and professional disciplines. They are good to revise content easily and efficiently as hooks to memory near examination, However, their overuse can cause confusion among the new listeners, “ holds this blogger who did an action research on their use for commerce students at senior school level, The abstract of the action research is as follows.
TITLE:A study of the revision of commerce curriculum by creating memory aids through acronyms and acrostics revealed the significantly higher self confidence of students to face the public examination.
A one-week end-of-session exercise was undertaken to prepare charts and poster exhibits on various topics of the commerce textbook of class XI of the CBSE curriculum.
First, the modeling was done the teacher to demystify the technique of processing the information and restructuring it through acronyms and acrostics.
The students (N=45, Age: 15-17 years, Middle SES, English medium urban School) were divided into five groups with three members in each group. Each group worked on two topics of the textbook and produced three to five charts or posters on each topic.
In all, 120 charts and posters were produced in three days which were displayed in three rooms.
An exhibition was put up for the next three days for other students, parents and neighborhood community. Thus, the students passed through the stages of information processing, information restructuring and communication.
The exercise resulted in significantly improved perceived self-confidence of students (N=45, P≤0.05, D.F. =3) as analyzed by the chi-square technique.
Keywords: Revision work, memory, acronyms and acrostics as memory aids, self-confidence.
References
Kishore, Lalit. A Pedagogic Experiment in Physics and Language-Art Linkage Through Acrostic Verses at The High School Level: an Action Research, http://episteme4.hbcse.tifr.res.in/proceedings/strand-ii-cognitive-andaffective-studies-of-stme/kishore
(19 January 2014).
Kishore. Lalit. (2014). Revisiting Acrostic Poetry on World Poetry Day. (online), ww.scratchmysoul.com
Kishore, L. (2007). Haiku poems in physics, IAPT bulletin, 24 (10).
Kishore, L. (2008). Haiku in physics, Teacher Plus, Jan. Issue.
Kishore, L. (2008). Physics and language art links through acrostic verses, CASTME Journal, 28(1), 19-21.
Kishore, L. (2010). Teacher uses rap to help students to remember math concepts, Cplash, June 29, www.cplash.com/category/pageIndex/262
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