Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effects of three writing assignments (sentence making, composition writing and cloze test) on vocabulary learning and tried to compare the effectiveness of these assignments to see which one has the best effect. Accordingly, 102 homogeneous pre-intermediate EFL female learners, studying English at an institute in Shiraz, Iran, were randomly divided into three groups. At the beginning, an unannounced researcher-made pre-test including 60 multiple choice tests (60 vocabulary items, from all parts of speech) was administered which showed no learners knew all the items. Then during 6 sessions the 60 vocabulary items were taught (each session 10 items). Each session, in the first group the participants were asked to write a sentence for each of the 10 items. In the second group the participants were asked to write a composition using the 10 newly taught vocabulary, and in the third group the participants were asked to fill in the blanks of a cloze-test. After the 6th session a post-test which was the same as the pre-test was administered. To analyze the data obtained from the tests, two one-way ANOVAs and three paired t-tests were utilized. The results indicated that all three assignments were significantly effective to help learners learn new vocabulary items and that the learners were not significantly different from each other in the pre-test. Moreover, the group which was to write a composition did significantly better in the post test than the two other groups but the difference between the two other groups was not significant. An interview was done by the researcher after the treatment period. The interview results confirmed the beneficial effects of these assignments on learners' vocabulary learning.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.