the effect of input, input-output andoutput-input modes of teaching on vocabulary learning of iranian efl learners

this study was designed to find which one of the three different presentations, i.e. input, input-output, and output-input, will be more effective in iranian efl learners' vocabulary acquisitions. to this end, first 54 out of 64 female students, aged from 19 to 23 years, with an average of 21, were selected out of starter-level efl learners at the university of tarbiat moalem in bandar abbas, iran. they were also in three classes of 17, 14, and14 students. the research was done on three classes based on the book titled american english file (starter). tests used in this study contained 40 multiple-choice items of vocabularies related to chapters 1&2 of american english series (starter).then, each class was treated based on one of the orders of teaching out of three. after treatment, the same vocabularies which were used in the pretest were given for posttest. two analytical methods were applied, matched t-test and one-way anova. the result revealed that the output-input group performed better than the input-output and the input-output performed better than input group. in other words, students in output-input group performed best in their post-tests.