the comparative effects of decision making versus jigsaw tasks on iranian efl learners' collocation learning and retention

The present study sought to compare the differential effects of decision-making and jigsaw tasks on iranian efl learners’ collocation learning and retention. to this end, 75 iranian intermediate efl students from two branches of islamic azad university, including gonbad-e-kavoos and gorgan branches, iran, were volunteers for participating in this study. subsequently, only 60 students out of these 75 students were chosen based on their preliminary english test scores, and were randomly assigned to two main groups (decision making /jigsaw). given the purpose of the study, the teacher put them into groups of six in order to facilitate the completion of the task. the participants were selected through convenience sampling. the researcher conducted a quasi-experimental design. to determine the effects of the tasks (decision making /jigsaw), the two main groups were given the collocation pre-test aiming at examining their existing knowledge of collocation. in addition to the regular educational materials which were used in the classes of the university, the teacher provided the learners with decision making and jigsaw tasks separately. decision-making task referring to a task whereby “students are given a problem for which there are a number of possible outcomes and they must choose one through negotiation and discussion” (richards & rogers, 2001, p. 234). according to richards and rogers (2001, p. 234), jigsaw tasks involve “learners combining different pieces of information to form a whole. the results of the repeated measures anova revealed that decision making and jigsaw tasks had a statistically differential and positive effects on collocation learning and retention of iranian efl learners. besides, the results of the independent samples t-test revealed that the jigsaw group significantly performed better than the decision-making group in the immediate post-test and delayed post-test. the findings of this study may have implication for efl teachers who can introduce the jigsaw and decision-making tasks into their classroom, along with encouraging the learners to do dictionary-look up.