Enhancing the Vocabulary Learning of the Autonomous Learners in the Iranian EFL context

Vocabulary learning occupies an eminent and a distiguished place in English language education. A learner is expected to be more proficient in all his/her learning skills through acquiring more words. A learner can be more efficient and more confident in his/her communication while talking to others. It also results in a good career with more vocabulary. Most of the teachers even accept that FL learners are not efficient in vocabulary.Vocabulary learning is a tedious task which is possible if the language learners are autonomous in their learning and create situations by themselves to learn. These situations are the different language learning activities which are to be created by the learners. Different studies (e.g. Holec, 1981; Dickinson, 1992) so far shows that learning can be more effective when learners are granted more autonomy. Till the secondary level, the learners' concentration is mostly on core subjects in the educational context of Iran. Despite English being one of the subjects, it is considered by them as only to confine to the syllabus and pass the examination. The trouble begins when the learners enter the higher levels i.e, the universities, where they have to be more proficient with the language and less dependent upon the teacher.Hence, to improve the LSRW skills of the learners, they were given a set of vocabulary learning activities to promote their inefficiency in vocabulary which curtailed automatically their communication skills. In this study, two groups of the learners in the form of experimental and control groups were chosen to do the research. The subjects were the Eglish language learners studying in an English language institute in Mazandaran.The findings of the study showed the improvement of the learners in their learning skills and proved that when they are autonomous, their motivation increases and leads to their better learning. Hence, the findinds of the study can be beneficial for language teachers and syllabus designers to help language learners in the process of FL learning

کلیدواژه ها:

vocabulary learning ، learner autonomy ، vocabulary activities ، language learning