A Survey on Iranian EFL Learners' Beliefs on the Role of Rote Memorization in Learning Vocabulary and Its Effect on Vocabulary Achievement

The purpose of this study was to investigate the Iranian EFL learners’ beliefs on the role of RL in vocabulary learning, and how it could affect their achievement. One-hundred and three students majoring in English (Literature, Translation, and Teaching) at the Departments of Foreign Languages and Linguistics at Roudehen and the Western Branch of Islamic Azad University participated in this study. Two questionnaires (Students and Teachers’ questionnaires) with a vocabulary test and a proficiency test (ECCE) were used in this study. Various statistical tests including Descriptive Analysis and Factor Analysis as well as correlation analysis along side with Chi-Square analysis were run to analyze the data. The findings of this study revealed that the learners believe RL is an effective way of learning EFL vocabulary, but not the best way. They see that reviewing well and having structured review is more effective for them to learn more vocabularies. This study also revealed that the relationship between beliefs and strategy use was positive and significant, but the relationship between beliefs and proficiency of the learners, and also the relationship between strategy use and proficiency of the learners were insignificant but there was a slight correlation between the items. The findings also showed that there was no significant association between the variables beliefs and vocabulary test scores.