Second language vocabulary learning: Etymology or synonymy?

The teaching experience shows that sometimes the etymology of words can enhance second language vocabulary learning and sometimes knowing the synonymous words help second language learners in improving their lexical knowledge. As these two are from among the most frequent ones, the major issue in this study is to evaluate the role of teaching etymologies in comparison with giving known synonyms of the words in learning the vocabulary. As the learners’ ability in using words after passing some time of learning is important, the effect of these two methods on short term and long term retention across different proficiency levels were investigated. The participants were 120 learners at Alzahra University in Tehran, Iran. Based on the results of PET test they were classified into two groups of elementary and advanced levels of language proficiency. They were taught the vocabulary items through etymology and synonym. The results demonstrated the mnemonic efficacy of etymology presentation at high level in both short and long term retention.