The Effect of Implementation of English Literature on Vocabulary Retention Enhancement of EFL Learners: Case Study English Short Stories

Reading short story, can be considered as a good learning technique to improve learners' vocabulary knowledge. Reading short story is a type of reading instruction program used in ESL or EFL settings, as an effective means of vocabulary development. Vocabulary appears to be the heart of language especially by teenagers. The purpose of this study was to examine whether reading short story can affect teenagers’ vocabulary learning in English. 40 Iranian school students (teenagers) from one language institute with the same language system and the same level of English proficiency participated in this study. All of the students were teenager and had learned English as a foreign language. This study employed a one group pretest posttest quasi-experimental design; the pretest and posttest were the same with 65 vocabulary test items related to both students' current course book vocabulary items which were familiar to them and the new items related to the story book. For data analysis, paired t-test was used and it was revealed that reading short story might enhance the achievement of vocabulary items, and consequently it might bring up a positive effect on teenagers’ vocabulary learning. All the conditions especially teaching materials were kept equal and fixed at each level, except for the experimental group the subjects were given one extra short story to read outside for three weeks. The results showed that experimental group at both levels indicated improvement in their vocabulary learning after the experiment. However, success of any methodology, strategy or material used depends on the nature of the material and perceptions of EFL learners towards that methodology, strategy and material. In that respect, this paper attempts to investigate the role of short-stories in developing vocabulary of EFL learners.

کلیدواژه ها:

Retention ، Vocabulary ، English Literature ، EFL learners