THE EFFECTS OF PERIPHERAL READING ON LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY

Based on the ideas that peoples’ thought, feelings and actions are influenced by stimuli that are perceived without any awareness of perceiving, and that a greet percent of all our learning is unconscious, this study intended to investigate the effects of peripheral (subliminal) reading on learning English vocabulary in Iranian schools. To investigate the effectiveness of this technique the 60 is subjects were divided into two groups : the experimental and the control group . during three months of study , the experimental group was exposed to clearly designed posters regarding lexical and grammatical points in the text book. The posters were changed every two weeks according to the new vocabulary the learners were dealing with in their text books. Sometimes the teacher called the learners’ attention to posters , sometimes the facing the subjects, just showed them a poster for a second and then put it down. The control group, however didn’t receive such a treatment. The analysis of data after the vocabulary test showed that the observed value of t was significant and that the difference was statistically significant. This is support for the claim that the use of peripheral reading technique in teaching English vocabulary promotes the language vocabulary performance of the subjects. Therefore, it is concluded that the activation of unconscious mind can increase the effectiveness of language teaching.

Keywords:

reading , peripheral , English , unconscious