Thinking EFL Vocabulary Learning Strategies Aloud: A Triangulated Study

The current study investigated whether use of think-aloud protocol, as a qualitative data elicitation method, would yield results different from those obtained through interview and structured questionnaire in vocabulary strategy research. The study also aimed at identifying the strategies adopted most and least frequently by Iranian EFL learners for vocabulary acquisition. To this end, twenty two undergraduate EFL students were randomly selected as the participants of the study. The Vocabulary Levels Test developed by Nation (2001) was used as a think-aloud task and the participants were audio-recorded individually. A researcher-made expert-viewed semi-structured interview was also conducted after the think-aloud procedure. Additionally, the Likert-scale Vocabulary Learning Strategy Questionnaire (VLSQ), developed and validated for the Iranian context by the Authors (2009), was used to collect questionnaire data. Using Sack s (1984) motivated looking approach, the results of both think-aloud procedure and semi-structured interview were subjected to content analysis and grouped in three codes which were then quantitized (Dornyei, 2007) and frequency analyzed. The results of Chi-square analysis indicated there was no significant difference between the results obtained from the think-aloud procedure and those of the semi-structured interview; nor was any difference found between the results of think-aloud procedure and those gained from VLSQ. Moreover, the most frequently adopted strategies were found to be repetition , guessing and dictionary use and the least frequently adopted strategies were reported to be semantic maps , consultation with others and using bilingual word lists .The results are discussed in detail in the paper and the implications are presented.