word mapping, root analysis, and collocation strategies in vocabulary development

Considering the importance of vocabulary in any language, finding a more effective way of vocabulary teaching has been challenging in the last decades. this study aimed at investigating the effect of word map, root analysis, and collocation strategies on iranian intermediate efl learners’ vocabulary development. the design of this study was quasi-experimental, with three experimental groups receiving treatment in three different methods and a control group instructed by the traditional method. eighty intermediate learners were selected based on convenient sampling as the participants of this study. further, one hundred vocabulary test items of this study were selected from four corners books and oxford word skills book. a pre-test was administered before teaching the vocabulary items to the learners. then a posttest was run to investigate the effect of the three strategies of vocabulary learning on the vocabulary development of the learners. the result of each experimental group was compared with the control group by independent t-test. the three experimental groups outperformed the control group. moreover, the three strategies were compared with each other concerning their effect on the learners’ performance in the posttest. therefore, a one-way anova test was run to achieve this goal. the results revealed that the collocation group significantly outperformed the root analysis group; however, the differences between word map vs. collocation groups and word map vs. root analysis groups were not statistically significant. these findings may help language teachers and learners in choosing the appropriate and most effective vocabulary learning strategy.