THE EFFECT OF CONTEXTUALIZED VS. DE-CONTEXTUALIZED METHODS ON THE ACQUISITION OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS BY IRANIAN INTERMEDIATE EFL LEARNERS

The present study sought to investigate the effect of contextualized and de- contextualized methods on the acquisition of lexical collocations by Iranian intermediate EFL as well as the relative efficacy of using pictures on the acquisition of lexical collocations in comparison with that of contextualization. To this end, 75 homogenous Iranian intermediate EFL learners whose age ranged from 12 to 17 were randomly assigned to three experimental groups (EG1, EG2 and EG3). A pre-test on collocations was given to the three groups to measure the participants’ knowledge of target forms before starting the treatment. Collocations were taught to the participants in EG1 through contextualization, where as the participants in EG2 were provided with the same target forms through a de-contextualized list of collocations with their Persian equivalents. As for the participants in the EG3, lexical collocations were taught by using pictures. To measure the gains, a post- test was run after the treatment. The results indicated that both contextualizing and using pictures exert a significant effect on the acquisition of lexical collocations by the participants. The results also indicated that the group taught via contextualized method outperformed the group taught through pictures; however, the difference was not statistically significant. Accordingly, it can be concluded that contextualization and pictorial presentation of collocations are both equally effective and statistically more effective than de-contextualized method.