the impacts of physical activities on efl iranian learner’s l2vocabulary retention and reminding

the impacts of physical activities on efl iranian learner’s l2vocabulary retention and reminding

the purpose of the study was to investigate the impacts of using physical activities on efl iranian learner’s l2vocabulary retention and reminding.the research sample included 50 intermediate participants who were study english as a foreign language (efl) in gooya language training centre in ahvaz.they were non-randomly divided into two equal groups; one experimental group and one control group. then, the researcher measured the participants’ proficiency level of english vocabulary knowledge by administering a vocabulary pre-test. the learners in the experimental group received the treatment through physical activities of gestures. the new words were taught to the experimental group through the researcher’s gestures including the movements of her head and hands. the control group received the word instruction through traditional method. the instruction lasted nine sessions of 50 minutes.

in the first two sessions, the oqpt and the pre-test were administered in five sessions, the learners received the treatment in the eighth session, the immediate post-test was given to the participants of both groups to measure their vocabulary remind, and in the three weeks later, the delayed post-test was administered to determine the effect of the treatment on the participants’ vocabulary retention. the results of one-way anova and independent sample t-test showed that there was a significant difference between the immediate post-tests of both control and experimental groups while there was not a significant difference between their delayed post-tests. the findings suggest that this approach could also be useful for efl teachers may physical activities like body movement and gestures to teach vocabulary to the learners for better vocabulary retention and reminding.