ENHANCING LEXICAL COMPETENCE: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PRODUCTIVE LEXICON ACQUISITION TASKS IN IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS

Abstract

The development of productive vocabulary knowledge represents a persistent challenge for second-language learners, particularly when learners possess receptive knowledge of lexical items but have difficulty retrieving and using them productively. This study compared the effectiveness of three productive lexical activities—open-cloze, sentence translation, and sentence writing—in developing productive lexical competence among Iranian pre-university EFL learners. It also examined whether gender influenced learners’ productive lexical performance across the three task conditions. A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design was employed with 384 intermediate-level EFL learners, who were assigned by intact class to one of three task conditions. Participants’ receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge was assessed before the intervention, and 20 lexical items known receptively but not productively were selected as the target items. Posttest productive vocabulary performance was analyzed using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), controlling for initial productive vocabulary knowledge. In addition, participants responded to three open-ended questions concerning their experiences, perceived effectiveness, challenges, and future use of the lexical activities, and their responses were analyzed using thematic content analysis. The quantitative results revealed a significant overall effect of task type, F(2, 380) = 6.063, p = .003, ηp² = .031. Sentence writing produced the highest adjusted posttest performance and significantly outperformed both open-cloze and sentence translation, whereas the difference between open-cloze and sentence translation was not statistically significant. Gender did not significantly influence productive lexical performance, F(1, 377) = 0.238, p = .626, ηp² = .001, and the Gender × Task interaction was also nonsignificant, F(2, 377) = 2.829, p = .060, ηp² = .015. The qualitative findings indicated that learners generally perceived the productive activities as useful for vocabulary development, confidence, and active lexical use, while also reporting differences in cognitive demands and individual learning experiences. Taken together, the findings suggest that productive task type is associated with differences in productive lexical performance, with sentence writing providing the strongest performance outcomes among the three activities under the conditions examined. The findings also indicate that these task effects did not vary significantly by gender.