the effects of mnemonic vs. data-driven instructions on vocabulary learning and retention of iranian efl learners

The current research examined the effect of one mnemonic technique called kwm and the ddl technique on the learning and retention of vocabulary among iranian efl learners. the participants were iranian efl students learning english at ferasat foreign language institute in quchan, khorasan razavi province, iran. after running ket test, 60 students were assigned to two equal experimental classes (e1 & e2, n=30). primarily, as the pretest, a teacher-made multiple choice test was conducted. the e1 group students received ddl techniques based on the corpus provided by ludwig. guru software. the e2 group students received the kwm technique by providing an acoustic link between a familiar word in l1 and the vocabulary in l2, which are sound-alike. the post-test was the same as the pretest, and students scores were recorded as their posttest scores. in addition, a delayed posttest was administered after two weeks. the data analysis revealed that ddl and kwm significantly improve vocabularies learning and retention. in addition, there were no significant differences between the performance of the two groups regarding their learning and retention. and finally, the pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research are offered.