Two studies compared the effectiveness of the bilingual-dichotic method with conventional diotic methods for teaching Russian vocabulary to English-speakers. Subjects were 101 college students. In the bilingual-dichotic method, the foreign word is presented to the right ear and simultaneously, the equivalent native word is presented to the left ear; then the foreign word is presented to both ears. The learner views the list of new words during the dichotic presentation. In the diotic methods, either the foreign word is presented twice to both ears or the native word is followed by the foreign word. The studies assessed the effectiveness of the bilingual-dichotic method using visual cued-recall for the learning of Russian phrases. The new method was compared with a conventional method, and yielded statistically significantly superior learning performances, averaging 10-18% more correct responses. The effects are sufficient to support application of the method to vocabulary instruction in the early stages of foreign language learning. (MSE)