Investigating the Relationship of Memory Strategy Use with Reading Comprehension Ability and Vocabulary Size of Iranian EFL learners

Learning strategies today play an important role in the field of research in teaching methodology. Oxford (1990) defines them as specific actions which learners use to make learning easier, faster, motivating, and more interchangeable to new contexts of language learning. Utilizing the appropriate strategies guarantees greater success in learning and more confidence. One part of the study is on the memory strategy, a sub part of learning strategies based on Oxford's SILL (Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, Oxford, 1990). Thus, the objectives of this study were three-folded. The first objective of the study was to explore the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ memory strategy use and their reading comprehension ability. The study also intended to investigate the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ memory strategy use and their vocabulary size. Finally, the study aimed at finding out whether there is any significant difference between Iranian male and female EFL learners in term of the memory strategy they utilize. 80 participants (35 males and 45 females) majoring in English Language Teaching (ELT) were chosen from Birjand state university to take part in this study. In order to collect the data, three instruments were used. The first instrument was a 17-item memory strategy questionnaire. The second instrument was five TOEFL reading passages with 20 multiple choice comprehension questions, and the third one was Nation's (2007) vocabulary size test. In the case of the first two objectives, two Pearson correlation coefficients were used, and for the third objective, an independent sample t-test was run. The data analyses revealed that there was a significant positive relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ memory strategy use and their reading comprehension ability with correlation coefficient (r) of .765 and p-value of .00 < .01. In the same vein, the findings showed that there was a significant positive correlation between memory strategy use and vocabulary size of Iranian EFL learners with correlation coefficient of .887 and p- value of .00 < .01. Finally, the results of independent sample t-test demonstrated that there was not any significant difference between Iranian male and female EFL learners in using their memory strategy (P = .803 > .05). That is, they employed the memory strategy similarly. In conclusion, to make students become strategic readers, teachers should make students aware of their strategies and help them know the strategies while reading and memorizing vocabulary (Ko, 2002). Therefore, memory strategy can be interpreted as a helpful tool in enabling learners to know what and how to learn in different situations.

کلیدواژه ها:

Memory strategy ، Reading comprehension ، Vocabulary size ، EFL learners ، gender