The impact of personal life experiences on the recall and retention of vocabulary in reading comprehension of upper-intermediate EFL Iranian learners

The present study is an attempt to investigate the impact of personal life experiences on the recall and retention of vocabulary in reading comprehension. The participants were 69 Iranian upper- intermediate EFL learners in Alborz English language institute of Noor in Mazandaran, Iran. In order to be certain that they are at upper-intermediate level, a pretest of NTC's TOEFL was administered, and the participants were divided into two groups. One group was instructed through a personal life experience treatment in the process of vocabulary recall and retention during one semester (18 sessions). Another group was instructed through a traditional method (dictionary-based). Data analysis showed that the group instructed through personal life experiences had a better performance, followed by the group instructed through dictionary-based use. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ALSC 2012