on the comparison of keyword and semantic-context methods of learning new vocabulary meaning

the rationale behind the present study is that particular learning strategies produce more effective results when applied together. the present study tried to investigate the efficiency of the semantic-context strategy alone with a technique called, keyword method. to clarify the point, the current study seeked to find answer to the following question: are the keyword and semantic-context methods of learning new efl vocabulary in complementary line? that is, if used to teach a particular vocabulary meaning, will they provide better results than when we simply use only one of the methods? having the foregoing questions in mind, the following null hypotheses were proposed: 1- there is no difference in the perfomance of the students who learn new efl vocabulary through the keyword/context methods and those who do the same job in a no-strategy condition. 2- there is no significant difference in the performance of the students using keyword method and the students using semantic-context method. 3- there is no significant difference in the performance of the students learning new efl vocabulary through simultaneous keyword/context methods and the students involved in the same task using only one of those strategies. in order to test the hypotheses, 100 subjects were selected from a large number of students majoring in various teachnical courses. they were selected upon taking a standardized test (nelson). those students scoring more than 70 and less than 30 percent were not picked out. then the subjects were administered a vocabulary test consisting of 30 items which contained the words to be taught. this test was once used as a present and once as a post-test. students were taught the target words according to a specific strategy. every 25 subjects took part in one of the groups: control group (n0-strategy condition), keyword group, context group, the combined condition (keyword/context group). after receiving the treatments, the students took the post-test after a time interval. the statistical techniques used were t-test, correlation coefficient.