Using word cards or word lists to deliberately learn lexical items is a common practice among L2 learners. At their
simplest, these intentional vocabulary learning techniques differ in the medium that lexical forms and meanings
are presented, either on a set of double-sided cards or a sheet of paper. In practice, learning vocabulary with word
lists has a relatively long history, and it was especially popular at the time when the Grammar Translation method
dominated language teaching. Numerous vocabulary researchers have stressed the value of list learning. For
instance, Yamamoto (2014) investigated how Japanese EFL university students used word lists in their out-of-class
vocabulary learning processes, and to what extent explicit list learning led to gains in vocabulary. The students
reported adopting and combining various learning strategies along with their self-study of the vocabulary list,
among which memorization and repetition were the most important ones. The students would look at, write down,
and/or read aloud the words repeatedly to reinforce their rote learning of the vocabulary items. Furthermore, the
students’ learning outcomes were satisfactory, as they were found to increase both their receptive and productive
vocabulary size. These results demonstrate that word lists are useful in helping learners to focus on form and
meaning simultaneously for repeated retrieval.