A Comparative Study of Using Receptive and Productive Tasks on the Vocabulary Development of Upper-Intermediate Iranian EFL Learners

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate differential effect of using receptive and productive tasks on the vocabulary development of upper intermediate Iranian EFL learners and which of the tasks (receptive tasks or productive tasks) is more effective in vocabulary development. This study first examined the immediate effect of receptive and productive task and then the delayed effect of two kinds of tasks on the vocabulary development. For this end, 50 upper intermediate English learners received TOEFL vocabulary part test and 30 learners who had got higher mark selected for the treatment and divided into two experimental groups. Learners received an approximately 10 minute for 20 session productive task treatment and 10 minute receptive task. In the receptive group, the learners completed True-False, Matching and Multiple choice tasks and in the productive tasks completed Short-Response, Fill-in Blank and Sentence Writing tasks. All the learners after the treatment received immediate vocabulary post test and delayed post test to examine learners’ vocabulary learning development. The findings of the first research question indicated that both of the receptive and productive groups had development on the vocabulary learning. To answer the second question which examined two tasks (receptive or productive tasks) on the vocabulary learning, the learners who completed productive tasks outperformed those who did the receptive tasks that is in contrast to the predictions of the involvement load hypothesis, which does not predict that any output task will lead to better results than any input task.