چكيده
The effects of age on second language acquisition constitute one of the most debated topics in the field of SLA. Thus, the present study intended to explore the most and the least frequent vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) among Iranian EFL learners and the relationship between age and strategy use, To this end, a 42-item questionnaire adapted from the taxonomy of VLS developed by Schmitt (1997) was administered to 120 intermediate EFL students of ages between 7 to 30 (60 males and 60 females). All the students were assigned to four age groups: 7-11, 12-14, 15-18 and 19-30. The data from the study were summed up and the procedures of descriptive statistics (including means, standard deviations, etc) were conducted on them. Phi and Cramers’ V were then run in order to find out if there was a significant relationship between age and the use of VLSs by Iranian EFL learners. According to the results, Iranian EFL learners used social strategies more than determination strategies for finding the meaning of new words. In particular, the findings indicated that “using a bilingual dictionary ˮ was the most popular discovery strategy, while “using flash cards ˮ was rarely used. The most and the least consolidation strategies were “studying the sound of the word ˮ and “skipping or passing new words ˮ respectively. Also, it was found that older students used more strategies than younger ones and that there was a relatively strong association between age and the use of vocabulary learning strategies.
