Vocabulary learning strategies play an important role in vocabulary learning. Admittedly, lack of vocabulary knowledge will have an effect over all four of language skills: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. In addition, vocabulary learning and word retention are always the problems encountered by students at university. This study, hence, investigates ESL students studying teaching English as a second language in Universiti Putra Malaysia. This investigation attempts to understand the influence of informal language learning environment (parents and home environment) on the vocabulary learning strategies. This paper describes how mediating agents interfere in acquiring vocabulary learning strategies of ESL students or support them. The present study adopts the qualitative method. The researcher gathered data through in depth interviews and used open coding to code the data as well as constant comparative methods to analyze the data with ten students at the Faculty of Educational Studies in UPM. In order to the significance of mediating agents, the data revealed that parents' views of the importance of English are factors that elevate the process of learning vocabulary in all ten interviews. However, the information collected from the interviews showed that their parents had different perceptions on the learning of the English language due to their education level. Besides, language teachers have an effect on the students' beliefs, behaviors, and their choice of VLSs. Other contributors are affecting the vocabulary learning strategies were classroom and peers.
One of the major issues in critical linguistics and language education is analyzing the ideological content of textbooks. The dialectical connection between language and culture has always been a concern of L2 teachers and educators. Therefore, in this paper, the researcher has looked for the cultural values depicted in EFL books and tried to find their influence on Iranian learners as well as, the differences between cultural and language among learners and assesses the relative importance of language. In this study, one set of textbooks -interchange series- that are taught in English language institute in Iran are analyzed. The cultural values portrayed in these books were extracted, defined and exemplified in this paper. This study depicts that new interchange series do contain cultural values. However, shows that cultural impact does not occur through one book only. On the other word, the results found by the researcher indicated that these cultural values did not influence learners studying these books differently from those who study English through another set of books
This study aims to investigate the attrition rate of EFL concrete and abstract vocabulary among continuing and non-continuing Iranian female and male English language learners across different proficiency levels. They are students of a University and majored in different fields (between 20 and 25 years old). There was no treatment in this study where the researcher compared two groups on the same variables. Hence, the design of the current study is an ex-post facto design. A 40-item vocabulary test which varied across two proficiency levels are used to measure rate of vocabulary attrition as the instrument of this research. In the two stages, after an interval of three months, the students are taken the same tests. The results revealed that there was no significant difference between EFL attrition rate of abstract and concrete nouns among the continuing students across different proficiency levels. However, this hypothesis was rejected for the non-continuing learners at intermediate and advanced proficiency level. Keywords: Vocabulary attrition, Abstract and concrete nouns, Continuing and non-continuing students, Proficiency level IntroductionThe study of language attrition has recently emerged as a new field of study. The conception of loss in language skills occurred in a conference at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in 1980. This conference was dedicated to the theoretical basis of research in the field of language attrition and other related conferences that probed the process of language loss as a natural disorder from many other perspectives. Kopke (2004) stated that "attrition refers to the natural (non-pathological) loss of a language in bilinguals; generally speaking, changes in the linguistic environment and termination of an instructional program may lead to attrition"(p.15).In terms of language learning, researchers have used the same definition to develop a framework which involved divergent methods of data collection, sampling and instrumentation on language attrition in papers and publications. This taxonomical framework was the one provided by Van Els (1986, as cited in Kopke and Schimd, 2004) which was as following categories:1. L1 loss in L1 environment: Dialect loss 2. L1 loss in L2 environment: Immigrant 3. L2 loss in L1 environment: Foreign language attrition 4. L2 loss in L2 environment: Language reversion in elderly peopleThe main phases reported in the field of language attrition are the above categories as the framework has divided the field of attrition into four simple and discrete categories. But, in order to gain a better and clearer picture of the concept of attrition, other methodological issues such as the distinction between attrition in adults and children, the effect of age at the amount of attrition, the effect of age at bilingualism, the effect of gender at the amount of L2 attrition and so forth also needs to be taken into consideration. Stages in Language AttritionWeltens and Grendel (1993) suggested that in "the first stage of language attrition that it t...
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