Effects of Different Modes of Spacing on Iranian EFL Learners' Lexical Knowledge Development: Proficiency Levels in Focus

Subject Areas : Applied Linguistics

Mehrdad Mohebi ¹ , Omid Tabatabaei ^{2 *} , Hadi Salehi ³ , Melor Yunus ⁴

1 - PhD Candidate, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran
2 - Associate Professor, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran
3 - Assistant Professor of Teaching, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran
4 - Faculty of Education, UKM, Malaysia

Received: 2022-11-22 Accepted : 2023-04-23 Published : 2023-01-01

Keywords: Spacing Instruction, Lexical Development, EFL Proficiency Level, Massed Instruction,

Abstract :

This study examined the effect of spacing on lexical development focusing on the Iranian EFL learners’ proficiency levels. Participants were 120 EFL learners from 22 to 26 of age who were studying at several English institutes in Isfahan. Three tests were used to collect the required data. First, OQPT was employed to place the learners with similar language abilities in an experimental group and a controlgroup. Based on the OQPT results, each group was divided into two sub-groups including 30 highand30lowproficiencylearners.ThenapretestwasconductedtoevaluatetheEFLlearners’vocabularyknowledge.Learners inboth control and experimentalgroups receivedthe same lexiconbutin differentways.Experimental groupswere taughtnew wordsthroughspacedinstruction,whilecontrolgroupsreceivedthroughmassedinstruction.Thespacingclasseswereheldonce a week in seven weeks while massed classes were held in one session in the eights week. During the posttest, the researcher devised an achievement test, administered it after the treatment; the results were compared and analyzed in order to determine the extent of the participants' vocabulary improvement. Findings of this research showed that using spaced instruction causedhigh proficiency learners to significantly outweigh the low proficiency ones. Since spacing has been widely known to have a positiveeffectonlearningandlong-termmemory(Cepedaetal.,2006),thereforeitcanbefoundusefulforcurriculumdevelopers and syllabus designers in deciding where to put the new vocabulary in a course or a book