Evaluating the Success of Iranian EFL Visual Learners in Vocabulary Learning Through Word List Versus Sentence Making Approaches

This study sought to evaluate the learners' achievements with the visual learning style when exposed to the sentence making and word list approaches. On that account, 45 basic level participants who studied at the Iran Language Institute (ILI), Bushehr, took part in this research study. At the outset, the learners were given Barsch learning style inventory (1991) to determine the learners' learning style. Accordingly, merely those test takers who had the visual learning style were chosen for the current study. Then, the researcher-made pre-test was run to know the unfamiliar vocabularies. Thereafter, they were randomly classified into two groups. In the course of 8 treatment sessions, one group was required to make sentences, and the other one was asked to acquire the new words by word list learning method. Not long afterwards, the post-test and the delayed posttest were carried out. In order to analyze the data, Independent Sample t-tests were run. The results cast light on the fact that word list learning seemed to be effective in gaining knowledge of the new words in the short-term memory. By contrast, retaining words by sentence making approach regarded superior to word list learning in the long term memory.