The Impact of Cloze Task, Translation, and Back Translation on the Technical Vocabulary Learning and Retention

Abstract

This study focused on the comparison between the effects of translation, back translation, and cloze
task used for the learning and retention of technical medical terms in an ESP class.These tasks were
selected to comply with Depth of Processing Hypothesis based on which the more cognitively one is
engaged in learning a word, the more likely it is to remember it later. Investigating learners’
motivation for learning technical vocabulary by these techniques was another concern of this study.
In this regard 42 medical female undergraduates attending an ESP class at Islamic Azad University
of Najafabad took part in the experiment. They were randomly divided into three groups. The first
group filled in the blanks of two English medical texts with technical vocabulary (Cloze task) in two
sessions. The second group translated the same medical texts into Persian and the third group
translated the same texts from Persian into English (Back translation). All groups took the
immediate and delayed posttests. The results showed that the cloze task group(CTG) outperformed
the others. In fact, cloze task was found more effective than the other two tasks for technical
vocabulary learning, as it required a deeper level of processing.