The Effect of Summarizing Through Podcasting on the Vocabulary Learning of the Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners in Extensive Reading

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of summarizing throughpodcasting on the vocabulary learning of Iranian intermediate EFL learners in extensivereading. For this purpose, adopting an experimental design, from a pole of 120 students,through the PET test 60 intermediate learners were selected to participate in the study. Thelearners were selected from Goyeshe Novin English Institute of Tehran and were randomlydivided into two groups of 30 students as experimental and control. In order to test the degreeof vocabulary of learners, a researcher-designed 40-item multiple choice test comprised ofvocabulary on different subjects was administered as pretest in order to investigate thelearners existing vocabulary. The test was developed based on the vocabulary items of thenovel of ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ by ‘Mark Haddon’, that wasused for the extensive reading program. The treatment lasted 5 weeks, during which theexperimental group was taught the new vocabulary through summarizing, reading, and thenproducing podcasts and sharing them on social media. The control group received notreatment. Two weeks after the treatment phase (summarizing the extensive reading textsthrough podcasting), a post-test was administrated in order to see if there was anyimprovement in vocabulary under the effect of the two techniques. The analysis of the dataobtained from the tests, i.e. independent-sample t-tests revealed that the experimental groupoutperformed the control group on the vocabulary test.

Keywords:

extensive reading , summarizing , podcasting , vocabulary learning