The Effect of Implementing Guided Discovery Tasks on Receptive Vocabulary Learning of Iranian EFL Learners in Blended Classes

Abstract

There were lots of studies with different methods in the field of vocabulary learning to show a suitable way for learning vocabularies. But still there was a gap in this area; There was no study to combine guided discovery, blended learning, and receptive vocabulary to be performed in Iran. In the current research an OPT test assigned to 140 students of Behgouyesh institution in Ardabil and homogenized learners were determined. Among all the learners, 32 intermediate male learners selected randomly and divided into control and experimental group. To capture the initial performance of the control and experimental group, a pretest from TESTS HOME site was held. Regarding control group, students were given time to use discovery learning during each session; On the other hand, in Experimental group guided discovery and blended learning were combined together. It took 2 months to carry out the treatment. The sessions were carried out once a week with the total number of 4 to 5 sessions each month. For evaluating the possible differences between the control and the experimental group, independent sample t-test was used to the results of the pretest and the posttest of receptive vocabulary. Besides, paired sample t-test was utilized to check for the students' potential enhancement in receptive vocabulary learning from the pretest to the posttest. Finally, it was concluded that both groups progressed in the posttest of receptive vocabulary. However, this improvement was statistically significant simply for the experimental group (P≤.0001).