LANGUAGE IN INDIA

The Impact of Translation Method On Word Meaning And Fill-In-the-Blank Tests Procedures on Short-Term and Long-Term Retention of Vocabulary Items

Sadeg Ebrhimi Kavari, Ph.D.
Seyed Hossein Fazeli, M.A

Abstract

The purpose of research described in the present study to investigate the impact of translation method on word meaning and fill-in-the-blank tests, their correlation, and procedures on both short-term and long-term retention of vocabulary items. The current study explores the relations between the methods of language teaching (here, translation method) and type of tests (here, word meaning and Fill-in-the-blank tests). The paper presents a vocabulary knowledge scale and scores the learners' learnt vocabularies as achievement test. The population for subject recruitment was all under graduate students at the second semester in a large university in Iran (both male and female) who study English as a compulsory paper. In Iran, English is taught as a foreign language.

Keywords: Vocabulary acquisition, translation method, retention

1. Introduction

The crucial role lexis plays in second language learning and teaching has been repeatedly acknowledged in theoretical and empirical second language acquisition vocabulary research. Joe (1994) emphasized the importance of vocabulary learning by mentioning "one cannot communicate or apply grammatical and phonological rules without having first developed a core vocabulary." Similarly, it is stated that "lexical knowledge is known to be an absolutely crucial factor across the whole spectrum of L2 activities" (Singleton, 1999). This same idea is also found in Henriksen, Albrechtsen and Hasstrup (2004), Kelly (1991), Linnarud (1986) and meara (1996) who points out the lexical competence is "at the core of communicative competence."

Although there seems to be a growing acceptance among SLA researchers that vocabulary is a crucial component of overall communicative competence (Schmitt & McCarthy, 1997), it is an area that is often neglected both in and outside the classroom and there is still remains an enormous amount of research to be done in the area, as it is still far from clear how learners acquire (Paribakhht & Weche, 1997). In fact, the acquisition of new lexical item is a complex process (Eliss, Tanaka and Yamazaki, 1994).

Nowadays, it is widely accepted that vocabulary teaching should be part of the syllabus and taught on a well-planned and regular basis (Lewis, 1993, 1996), but the controversial problem arises as to the type of test of knowledge of vocabulary which is proposed to be done in order to evaluate and score the vocabulary learning of learners.

The two of dimensional views of vocabulary learning are:

1. Vocabulary size (breadth of one's word knowledge or quantity of words),
2. Vocabulary depth (richness or quality about particular words or phrases).

The focus on each of these views will define the preparation of teacher training programs, Curriculum development, material preparation and syllabus design.

The present work focuses on the relationship between vocabulary size and application of Fill-in-the-blank test to estimate the correlation between them in order to apply such a test. Through the present study, investigators aim to show the impact of translation method on word meaning and Fill-in-the-blank tests and their correlation on short-term and long-term retention in the condition that learners were not allowed to guess or randomly answer the questions.

2. Methodology
2.1 Participants

The population for subject recruitment was all undergraduate students from second semester at a large University in Iran in academic year 2008-2009, who volunteered to participate in this study. The participants were 53 (29 male and 24 female). They were told that this study would not affect the final results of their course.

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