The Effect of Input Enhancement on Academic Vocabulary Learning among Intermediate EFL Learners in Iran

Abstract

The present study investigated the impact of textual input enhancement on the academic vocabulary learning among intermediate EFL Learners in Iran. The participants of the present study were altogether 56 EFL learners (28 males and 28 females) whose age ranged from 16 to 21. The 56 participants were randomly assigned to control (comparison) and treatment (experimental) groups. The participants, on the whole, were exposed to 14 sessions of instruction over a 14-week period. The participants received instruction under two unenhanced and textually enhanced conditions, covering one academic passage containing the targeted academic words in each session. The results indicated that the experimental group significantly differed from the control group in that they outperformed the control group in terms of both immediate and delayed receptive and productive vocabulary gain. Thus, exposure to input which is textually enhanced through different techniques (e.g. boldfacing, underlining) facilitates the learning of academic vocabulary. Overall, the present study brought about one major finding which indicated that the employed textual input enhancement (TIE) techniques in the present study helped both receptive and productive academic vocabulary knowledge to grow significantly.