The Comparative Effect of Teaching Spelling through Mnemonics and Phonics on EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Achievement and Retention

Abstract

The purpose of present study was to examine the comparative effect of teaching spelling through mnemonics and phonics on EFL learners' vocabulary achievement and retention. Sixty female students of a junior high school were chosen among one hundred elementary students. To ensure the homogeneity of the students, a Key English Test was administered to all one hundred students, and a teacher-made vocabulary test was piloted with 30 students with similar characteristics to the target participants .The sixty students were divided randomly into two experimental groups, each group contains thirty students, the students in experimental group one were instructed mnemonics and the other experimental group were instructed phonics. Before treatment the teacher-made vocabulary test was administered as a pre -test and after the treatment post-test was run two times, first for vocabulary achievement, and after two weeks for retention. The design was quasi experimental. The results of the RM ANOVA indicated that there was no significant difference between the effect of phonics and mnemonics on EFL learners' vocabulary achievement, nor was there any significant difference between the effect of the two treatments on their vocabulary retention.

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“…According to Bald, phonics is the "systematic teaching of the sounds conveyed by letters and groups of letters and includes teaching children to combine and blend these to read or write words" (2007, in words of Khabiri & Rezagholizadeh, 2014, p. 1463. Furthermore, Goodman (1993) defines phonics as the relationship between the patterns and systems of oral and written language.…”

The Impact of Adopting an Eclectic Spelling Program on Minimizing KAU Engineering Students’ Spelling Mistakes

“…These devices provide memorable associations that help students recall the correct spelling of challenging words. They also tap into the power of imagery and creativity, making the learning process more engaging and enjoyable (Sener & Belfiore, 2005;Khabiri, & Rezagholizadeh, 2014). Furthermore, the use of mnemonic devices can aid in memorizing correct spellings, particularly for challenging technical terms.…”

“…English language students can be encouraged to create rhymes, acronyms, or visual aids that help them remember the correct spelling of complex words. These mnemonic devices tap into the power of association and visualization, making the learning process more engaging and memorable (Khabiri, & Rezagholizadeh, 2014).…”

Phoneme -Grapheme decoding in Phonics-Based Instruction of English as a Second Language at an Italian High School: A Randomised Controlled Trial

“…ERPs can be defined as neuro-imaging, which potentially show effective events/ methods that could scaffold an individual's learning process. Finally, in the context of this trial, we define meta-cognitive phonics techniques as the concentration on exercises that teach phonics patterns rather than sight words (Khabiri, and Rezagholizadeh, 2014), so that the students, when taught for example, '-ment' or '-tion', would be able to recognise or even invent new lexis intuitively (see for example, Dickerson, 1975), rather than relying on memorized sight words. This would give classroom confirmation of Hensch's (in Bardin 2012) interpretation of how older students could overcome CPH barriers to learning by relying on cognitive reasoning rather than rote learning.…”

“…Ur (2012) amongst others, very clearly recognized the importance of phonemic awareness and in particular decoding skills, in L2 language learning. There is some recognition of phonics in the TESOL literature (for example, Khabiri;Roqayeh Rezagholizadeh, 2014 andJohnson, R. C., Tweedie, G. R, 2010); it is however rarely considered a valid technique in itself. Other phonics-related research, is now dated (for example, Dickerson, 1975 andWong, 1992) but did touch on elements such as prosody and decoding.…”