Mediating EFL Learners’ Overall and Lexical Writing Skills in English Classrooms: The Case of Receptive and Productive Types of Vocabulary Testing

The research on both receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge has attracted the attention of researchers, however, there is paucity of studies in these strategies on productive skills’ enhancement. Hence, this study aimed at finding the effects of receptive and productive types of vocabulary testing on overall and lexical writing performance of Iranian EFL learners. Multiple-choice format of cloze tests and C-tests were selected as receptive and productive forms of vocabulary testing, respectively. For this purpose, 60 Iranian EFL learners with the age range of 20 to 27 at the intermediate level took part in this study. The data gathering tools were Oxford placement test, a writing pretest, a writing post-test, and a rubric. The students were randomly assigned to one control group and two experimental groups whose vocabulary knowledge was assessed using Cloze tests and C-tests. The results of one-way ANOVA showed that using both C-tests and multiple-choice format of Cloze tests was effective in enhancing learners’ overall and lexical aspect of writing performance. The quantitative results approved by the semi-structured interviews from the C-test group that represented more positive attitudes towards the strategy. Analysis of the students’ responses revealed that they found C-tests more effective in improving their active vocabulary knowledge that assisted them in writing better essays. The findings of this study might provide new insights for language teachers and curriculum designers to apply receptive and productive measure of vocabulary to improve different aspects of the writing ability.