چکیده:
The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to assess the retention of two word types (synonyms and homonyms) in the short term memory, and (b) to investigate the effect of these word types on word learning by asking learners to learn their Persian meanings. A total of 73 Iranian language learners studying English translation participated in the study. For the first purpose, 36 freshmen from an intact class were presented with two lists of words with their Persian meanings. One of the lists included 5 pairs of synonyms and the other one included 5 pairs of homonyms. They were asked to retain as much vocabulary items as they can. Learning was measured by lexical representations of the words. The results showed the learners did better on the retention of homonyms than synonyms. For the second purpose, 37 sophomores from an intact class were provided with 40 words in pairs (20 synonyms and 20 homonyms). They were asked to write their Persian meanings in the testing session. The results indicated the students did better on learning synonyms than homonyms. The study revealed that homonyms are better retrieved in short term memory but learned more slowly regarding to the semantic representation.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"ir Abstract The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to assess the retention of two word types (synonyms and homonyms) in the short term memory, and (b) to investigate the effect of these word types on word learning by asking learners to learn their Persian meanings.
The importance of vocabulary learning and the researchers’ interest in this field have led into having a considerable research literature on vocabulary and acquisition (Tinkham, 1993; Huckin and Coady, 1999; Nation, 2001; Barcroft, 2007; Webb, 2007; Keating, 2008; Peters, Hulstijn, Sercu and Lutjeharms, 2009; Pellicer-Sánchez and Schmitt, 2010) and also devising a large bulk of textbooks and materials (eg.
As the aim of the present study is to compare the retention of two word types (Homonyms and Synonyms) in the short term memory and learning their Persian meanings in sense of semantic representation, it proves to be necessary to review the related literature.
1. First Experiment Measures As the purpose of the first experiment was to examine the retention of two word types in the short-term memory, the scores of students on the list of homonyms and synonyms were obtained and assessed using Spss for windows (see Table 4.
For the second experiment, the findings didn’t support the conclusions made by Finkbeiner and Nicol (2003), Tinkham (1993, 1997), Kroll and Stewart (1994) and Waring (1997) holding that presenting semantically grouped L2 words to learners has a deleterious effect on word learning."