This paper presents the e®ect of robotics assisted language learning (RALL) on the vocabulary learning and retention of Iranian English as foreign language (EFL) junior high school students in Tehran, Iran. After taking a vocabulary pre-test, 46 beginner level female students at the age of 12, studying in their¯rst year of junior-high participated in two groups of RALL (30 students) and non-RALL (16 students) in this study. The textbook used was the English book (Prospect-1) devised by the Iranian Ministry of Education for 7th graders, and the vocabulary taught and tested (pre-test and post-test) were taken from this book. Moreover, the treatment given by a teacher accompanied by a humanoid robot assistant in the RALL group took about ve weeks in which half of the book was covered, and the non-RALL group was taught in a traditional method. Finally, the teacher administered the post-test and delayed post-test whose results of repeated measures ANOVA and Two Ways ANOVA indicated that there was a signi¯cant di®erence regarding participants' vocabulary gain and retention in RALL group comparing to non-RALL group. In addition, the teacher reported the students' positive reaction to RALL in learning vocabulary. Overall, the results revealed that RALL has been very in-°u ential in creating an e±cient and pleasurable English learning environment. This study has some implications for technology-based education, language teaching, and social robotics¯elds.
Mobile phones as new addition to information and communication technologies have created new ways to help learners in the process of foreign language learning. Given the importance of academic vocabularies for university students, this study tried to investigate the effectiveness of SMS on Iranian university students' vocabulary learning and retention. To this end forty five university freshman students with upper intermediate proficiency level were chosen to take part in this study. During 16 weeks of experiment, the participants of the experimental group (N = 28) were taught 320 head words from the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000) via SMS. During the same period of time the participants of the control group (N=17) were taught the same words by using dictionary. At the end, both groups were given a vocabulary test from Academic Word List, to see the effect of SMS on their vocabulary learning and the scores of each group were compared employing an independent t-test. The result of the t-test showed that both groups had improved in the post-test. Although there was not any significant difference between the groups in the post-test, the result of the delayed post-test showed that SMS had more significant effect on vocabulary retention compared to using dictionary, and the experimental group outperformed the control group. The result of this study can have pedagogical implication for language teachers, in that they can use SMS as a useful way to help their students to retain vocabularies in their long-term memory.
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