A Comparative Study of Effect of Bottom-up and Top-down Instructional Approaches on EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Recall and Retention

This quasi-experimental study investigated the effect of bottom-up and top-down instructional approaches on English as a foreign language (EFL) vocabulary recall and retention. To this end, 44 high school students from two intact classes were assigned to bottom-up (n = 21) and top-down (n = 23) groups. The participants were exposed to 20 hours of explicit vocabulary instruction during 10 weeks (2 sessions per week). Two tests, vocabulary size test (VST) and controlled productive knowledge tests (CPKT), were administered to measure the participants’ achievement before and after the treatment. The results of two-way repeated measures ANOVAs and independent samples t-tests revealed that the bottom-up group outperformed the top-down group on both immediate and delayed post-tests.