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This study was designed to investigate the impact of visual mnemonic technique on young and adult Iranian English learners' vocabulary learning. The current study followed a quasi-experimental design. 48 female students were selected based on their performance on the Quick Placement Test. The participants were divided into four groups, two experimental and two control groups. Prior to the treatment, the participants of both groups were given a pre-test to determine the knowledge of vocabulary. Then, the experimental groups received the visual mnemonic technique for 8 sessions. The control groups went through a traditional method of teaching vocabulary. After 8 sessions, a post-test was administered to all groups. Two-way ANOVA between groups was run to the results of the vocabulary tests. The results exhibited that the experimental groups who received instruction on mnemonic technique outperformed their counterparts in post-test of vocabulary. However, the differences between the effects of mnemonic technique for young and adult learners who received the specific treatment were not statistically significant (P=0.05).

Vocabulary as an undeniable part of language learning is a main component in communication which requires to be taught in innovative ways. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of musical mnemonic on vocabulary recalling, and long-term retention of words by young learners. The design of study was experimental. Sixty teenagers from Shokoh Language Institute in small town of Khorramdare, Iran participated in the study. To conduct the study, participants were divided into experimental and control groups. A list of 14 words were harmonized to melody of mentioned song and recorded in a professional studio. Validity of the words were examined by Lawsh CVR (Content Validity Ratio) and CVI (Content Validity Index). The results from Independent T-Tests indicated that experimental group outscored control group. Regarding research questions, it was found that musical mnemonic improves vocabulary recalling of experimental group in comparison to control group. In addition, results related to research questions showed that musical mnemonic help learners better understand words in new contexts. The findings imply that musical mnemonic can improve memory, and comprehension by practicing, and using melodic and rhythmic information.

Early language learning for children is increasingly common, and the majority of parents and the public do not see it as superfluous or overburdening children. Moreover, teaching a foreign language (FL) to very young children has been an increasingly dominant trend in most globalized societies. While there is abundant literature that supports teaching a foreign language at an early age through language immersion programs, little is known about the efficiency of strategies used to explicitly teach new vocabulary words in a foreign language to young learners. This empirical investigation aimed to assess and compare the efficiency of two mnemonics that have been traditionally used to explicitly teach new foreign language words: the Keyword Method (KWM) and the Total Physical Response (TPR). Results indicate that the KWM is more effective than TPR in teaching new vocabulary words in a foreign language to early elementary school children.

Early language learning for children is increasingly common, and the majority of parents and the public do not see it as superfluous or overburdening children. Moreover, teaching a foreign language to very young children has been an increasingly dominant trend in most globalized societies. While there is abundant literature that supports teaching a foreign language at an early age through language immersion programs, little is known about the efficiency of strategies used to explicitly teach new vocabulary words in a foreign language to young learners. This empirical investigation aimed to assess and compare the efficiency of two mnemonics that have been traditionally used to explicitly teach new foreign language words: the Keyword Method (KWM) and the Total Physical Response (TPR). Results indicate that the KWM is more effective than TPR in teaching new vocabulary words in a foreign language to early elementary school children.

This study aimed at investigating the effect of keyword method, as one of the mnemonic strategies, on vocabulary retention of Iranian senior high school EFL learners. Following a quasi-experimental design, the study used thirty eight (n = 38) female senior high school students in grade four from two intact classes at a public high school. The students were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group was instructed through the keyword method and the control group learned vocabulary through the traditional method. To analyze the data, paired-samples t-test and independent samples t-tests were run. It was found that students in the experimental group significantly outperformed the students in the control group in vocabulary retention by keyword method. Also, a significant difference was found between the performance of the keyword group and traditional group in delay recall posttest. Overall, this study illustrated that the use of keyword method can largely reduce learners' problems in the acquisition and retention of L2 words. The findings of this research may have pedagogical implications for teachers and learners.

Inasmuch as the fact that writing is a cognitively demanding task and as a step toward overcoming some of the barriers English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners face during writing performance, this study attempted to investigate Iranian EFL learners' perceptions toward the most common writing difficulties. To this end, 120 Iranian EFL learners from Golestan University, Iran, filled out a reliable and validated questionnaire. The results of the questionnaire and the semi-structured interviews (N = 24) revealed that most of the participants agreed that for teaching grammar and punctuation, they should be embedded in a context and be integrated with the four skills. They also believed that teachers should use punctuation appropriately in their writings themselves and teach them to students explicitly. Besides, it was believed that through using mnemonics, students can better learn words spelling. The results of the interviews revealed grammar, spelling, punctuation, choice of words, organization, and familiarity with genres and rhetorical structures, negative transfer from Persian to English, and idiomatic expressions and collocations are the other factors that make the writing task difficult. Based on the students' perceptions, the findings of this study can inform English language teachers to teach grammar, punctuation, and spelling by contextualizing them in an appropriate context, and they offer some practical implications for teachers, learners, material developers, and curriculum designers in this regard.

Vocabulary is an important part of language which is central to all language skills and meaningful communication. One way through which vocabulary learning can be facilitated is by the use of vocabulary learning strategies (VLS). VLSs can empower language learners to be more self-directed, regulated, and autonomous. Also, they can help language learners to discover and consolidate the meaning of the words more effectively. Teachers' and students' behavior, functioning, and learning are, however, controlled by their thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions. The present study was an effort to explore the Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners' and teachers' beliefs about the usefulness of different types of VLSs. To that end, a VLS questionnaire developed for this purpose was given to 392 EFL teachers and learners. Based on the results of the study, the Iranian EFL learners and teachers believed that strategies such as paying attention to vocabulary forms, functions, and semantic relations; guessing the meaning of new words from the context; and using monolingual dictionaries can be very useful in discovering and consolidating the meaning of new words. They, nevertheless, expressed hesitancy to use L1, bilingual dictionaries, and mnemonic devices. The results of Kruskal--Wallis Test also showed that the preference for a few strategies differed across levels of education.

Ability to retrieve information is so important that Chastain (1976) and Brown (2000) do not consider learners to have learned something if they cannot remember it. This ability can also have practical significance too, since it can lead to successes at the exam time. Due to both theoretical and practical reasons, any method that can help the ability to retrieve is worth the attention and, if possible, applying in language classes. Meaningful vs. rote learning, mnemonic strategy or method of loci are just a few of the ways proposed to improve memory. The aim of this study is to do an experiment on the effect of Sokolov's match/mismatch theory on Iranian learners' retrieval. Based on this theory, violation of expectation can arouse attention which in turn can lead to longer retrieval of the material. The experiment was carried out on 35 students of English in Kish language school. Analysis of data showed that, if used successfully, it can lead to longer retrieval.

I portray mnemonic practices of Iranians who engaged with the past and keep the memories of martyrs of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) alive within frames and words. Through pictures taken during the annual commemoration of martyrs in southern Iran, I show how religiosity, politics and generational guilt are entangled in post-war Iran. I move against the grains of memory studies and visual anthropology by maintaining the silences and what is left unsaid instead of rendering war memories, acts of remembering and ways of seeing epistemologically coherent. I argue remembering is a practice locally shaped according to the politics of everyday life and not by imagined presupposition of memory scholars. Therefore, I draw an ontological approach towards memories in Iran by ways of seeing and religious worldview of those implicated in the Iranian memory machine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]