The effect of keyword and pictorial vocabulary teaching techniques on Iranian EFL learners’ vocabulary gain

This research investigates how two different mnemonic non-verbal techniques of vocabulary teaching i.e. keyword and pictorial affect learning of vocabulary items. For this purpose, 90 intermediate EFL learners were selected from among all 110 eleventh-grade students studying in a senior high school in Shahriyar, based on available sampling. Then, they were distributed in three groups (two experimental and one comparison group). In the first experimental group, the students were taught vocabulary through keyword technique and in the second one, they were taught adopting pictorial technique. Further, the third group of students was assigned as comparison group for which the vocabularies were presented using translation. Based on the results of the pretest, they were randomly divided into three equal groups (two experimental groups and one comparison group). At the end of each section of the treatment, the first three 1000 most frequent words from Nation and Beglar’s (2012) was used to measure the participants’ short-term memory recall of the lexical items. The results revealed the effect of the pictorial technique on the participants’ vocabulary learning. Analysis of immediate posttest confirmed the hypothesis that the participants who used the pictorial method could gain more vocabulary items than those who used the keyword technique and or translation.