The Effect of Formal/Informal Teacher Talk on Lexical Knowledge of EFL Learners

Abstract

Despite years of vocabulary instruction, most learners are highly apprehensive about learning vocabulary and its retention, determined by the style of teacher talk in the class (informal vs. formal) to some extent. The present study attempts to investigate the effect of formal/informal teacher talk on learning vocabulary by Iranian EFL learners. To do this end, forty homogenous intermediate EFL learners in two experimental groups were selected as the participants. Having taken a vocabulary pretest, both groups received treatment in the form of formal and informal teacher talk for ten sessions. After the treatment, both experimental groups were given the post-test to realize the possible difference in learning vocabulary between the two groups. The results of paired and independent samples t-test revealed that there was a significant difference between the performances of the two experimental groups. The results showed that the learners in informal talk group significantly outperformed those in formal talk group.

Keywords

• formal teacher talk
• informal teacher talk
• learning vocabulary
• efl learners
• lexical knowledge