A Comparison of the Effect of Text-Picture and Audio-Picture Annotations in Second Language Vocabulary Recall among Iranian EFL learners

Iran, ID CLEaR2015-236;

The present study was carried out to investigate the comparison of the effect of text-picture and audio-picture annotations in second language vocabulary recall among Iranian EFL learners. The participants in the study were selected from two intact classes including  80 students studying English at advance level in Bandarabbas Shokouh institute, Iran. Their level of English proficiency was determined on the basis of their scores on the PET proficiency test. Based on the results of PET proficiency test, 62.students was selected for main procedure. Then, they were randomly selected into two experimental groups including text-annotation group and audio-annotation group and a control group.  After answering vocabulary pretest,  during reading, the participants clicked the highlighted unknown words to access available annotations, the text-picture group was able to see textual explanation and pictorial description, and the audio-picture group was able to see pictorial description explanation and hear a spoken explanation. When they finished reading, they raised their hands to receive the posttests. The results of the study demonstrated that audio-picture annotation is more effective than text-picture annotation in facilitating L2 vocabulary immediate recall.  The results suggested that providing the new words whether in audio and text annotation during reading comprehension can help recalling new words.

Key words: text annotation, audio annotation, vocabulary learning