Teaching English Vocabulary with Greek or Latin Roots to Iranian EFL Students by PLS Sequential Structures

Abstract

PLS is a newly developed language teaching method which predominantly applies imaginative and random usage of pictures. The present paper explains and reports the application of a PLS technique in teaching English vocabulary with Greek or Latin roots to Iranian EFL learners. A pretest-posttest control-group design was used to investigate the effects of this sequential structures technique. Participants were intermediate level EFL students in two branches of the same language institute in Tehran (N = 94, p ? 0.05). The subjects were randomly assigned into two groups of treatment and control. The experiment lasted for seven one-hour lessons held in successive sessions in three weeks during which 35 Greek and Latin roots were taught with at least three English word examples. For the research instrument, the students were administered a 35-item multiple-choice vocabulary exam for the pre and post tests prior to and immediately after the teaching phase. Consequently, an independent sample T-test was used to examine the outcome of the experiment. At p = .009, the statistical test revealed a significant difference in the gain scores between the two groups. Also, the mean vocabulary gain score of 7.23 for the treatment group as opposed to the mean of 5.35 for the control group illustrated the relative more L2 vocabulary intake for the treatment group.