Effects of Recognition Task and Production Task on Incidental Vocabulary Learning of Iranian EFL Learners

ABSTRACT: The conviction that L1 and L2/FL learners can acquire unfamiliar vocabulary items in the course of reading, that is, that so-called incidental vocabulary acquisition is a by-product of the reading process, has been held by numerous researchers involved in the study of the relationship between reading and vocabulary (Paribakht & Wesche, 1997). This study investigated whether doing two types of tasks (production task and recognition task) are effective in incidental vocabulary learning of Iranian EFL learners. For this purpose 40 female Iranian EFL students at advanced level were selected based on their performance in Longman TOEFL Test (2007). They were then divided in two groups, one did recognition task and the other did production task through reading. This study investigated the effectiveness of each task on incidental vocabulary learning of the students. After ten sessions of treatments, the same vocabulary test was given to both groups as post-test to check the effectiveness of the treatments. Then paired sample statistics and independent sample tests were run. The results indicated that both treatments had significant effect on incidental vocabulary learning but this effect was greater in production group. It was concluded that those who did production task through reading outperformed those who did recognition group in vocabulary test. Both high-stake and low stakeholders can avail from the findings of this study.