Abstract

To investigate the effects of code-mixing, thematic clustering, and contextualization on L₂vocabulary recognition and production, a sample of 120 EFL students of Zaban Negar institute in Qazvin, Iran were divided into three groups. Each group received vocabulary instruction in one of the aforementioned techniques. Multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blanks vocabulary tests were used to measure the participants' recognition and production of the target words. The obtained data were analyzed using two separate one-way ANOVA procedures. Results indicated that there were no significant differences among the effects of code-mixing, thematic clustering, and contextualization on L₂ vocabulary recognition. But significant differences were observed among the effects of code-mixing, thematic clustering and contextualization on L₂ vocabulary production. The participants of the thematic clustering group performed better than the participants of the code-mixing group on the production test. But there was no significant difference between the code-mixing and contextualization groups. In addition, the participants of the thematic clustering group performed better than the participants of the contextualization group on the production test.

Key words: Code-mixing – thematic clustering, contextualization, vocabulary recognition, vocabulary production