This paper introduces the idea of using data-driven vocabulary files as a teaching practice for the course “English for Tourism 3” taught at the Faculty of Economics, University of Split. First, the design of the vocabulary file is explained as well as the rationale behind the exercise. Then, the analysis of the students’ response to the assigned exercises is presented. Finally, given the compl...

This research is aimed to test whether presentation of metaphorical connections among senses of words is significantly effective to improve nonEnglish majors’ memory of new words. Three experiments were conducted after pilot teaching and a pretext, in which two meanings of each word (totally 30 words) were offered to the EG and CG respectively through the proposed approach and traditional appro...

This study investigated the amount of incidental vocabulary learning through comprehension-focused reading of short stories and explicit instruction to this goal.  Forty male high school students were selected randomly, and divided into two groups of twenty.  One group of these students was given five 400-word-level short stories to read with the purpose of comprehension, and the students in th...

A key issue in language acquisition is to improve native-like proficiency in vocabulary use. One solution to this is to identify word frequencies (especially in conjunction with core vocabulary) and collocation patterns based on native speakers discourse. In this paper, I first discuss some of the puzzles presented in some long-standing and recent quantitative observations of the Mandarin lexic...

Many textbooks include semantically related words and sometimes teachers add synonyms, antonyms, etc. to the words in order to present new vocabulary items without questioning the possible effects. This study sought to investigate the effect of teaching vocabulary through synonym, semantically unrelated, and hyponym sets based on Higa’s (1963) proposed continuum. A total of 120 Iranian intermed...

This study was designed to investigate the effect of grammar and vocabulary pre-teaching, as two types of pre-reading activities, on the Iranian EFL learners’ reading comprehension from a schema–theoretic perspective. The sample consisted of 90 female students studying at pre-university centers of Isfahan.  The subjects were randomly divided into three equal-in-number groups. They participated ...