The present research aims at determining whether using video-treated pre-task and post-task instructions affect immediate vocabulary recall directly. To this purpose, one hundred and twelve Iranian EFL learners were selected through the convenience sampling method. Based on the OPT scale, ninety of the participants were chosen and put into three groups of pre-task, post-task, and control. After piloting seventy-seven multiple-choice vocabulary questions, the researcher used a fifty-item multiple-choice as the pre-test and a five-item multiple-choice as the post-test. The treatment took ten sessions. Repeated Measure ANOVA, t-Test procedure, and ANCOVA procedure were run to analyze the data. The result showed that there was an important difference between the performances of the groups regarding their immediate vocabulary recall in the post-test. The learners recalled the vocabularies better in the pre-task and post-task groups compared to the control group. Also, the post-task group outdid the pretask group. Therefore, video-treated post-task instruction improves learners' immediate vocabulary recall significantly.

EFL learners may advocate the desire to have a fulfilling experience while doing tasks rather than focus solely on finishing them. However, learners' perspectives have been virtually ignored in the classroom task implementation. Thus, the current study attempted to explore the perceptions of Iranian EFL learners towards listening pre-tasks in motivational and cognitive strategies instruction as a possible way to improve the quality of listening tasks experience. To this end, seventy-three EFL learners were divided into an experimental group (n=37) who received both motivational and cognitive strategies instruction and a control group (n=36) who received no strategies instruction. The data for the study were collected by means of a self-report task evaluation questionnaire, which assessed the participant’ subjective experience based on six subscales: interest/enjoyment, perceived competence, value/usefulness, effort/importance, felt pressure/tension and perceived choice during task-based activities of the listening comprehension. The data were enriched with the participants’ written comments, which were later content analyzed. Results indicate that the experimental group had more significant levels of positive experience related to the listening tasks than the control group. The findings of the study could be indicative of the efficacy of pre-task strategies instruction in addressing both motivational and cognitive aspects of listening pre-tasks and of how motivation and cognition interact to give shape to the unique subjective experience of EFL learners.

This study has examined the effect of semantic mapping on learning vocabulary across genders. The researchers selected 120 intermediate students after the administration of a standard proficiency test. A vocabulary test was also used to measure the students’ vocabulary knowledge. The experimental group received semantic mapping in the pre-reading stage, but the control group did not receive this treatment. The results of the study, based on statistical analysis of ANCOVA, indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group in vocabulary learning. As for the gender differences, the results indicated no significant difference between males and females. It can be suggested that semantic mapping can be used as an efficient methodology for teaching vocabulary, a technique which is equally effective for male and female EFL Learners.