Distance education and vocabulary podcasting tasks: Attitude in focus

Abstract

Distance education is a development in teaching and learning. Learners work and learn on their own at a distance from teachers and instructors with a degree of independence. The most important problem confronted by EFL learners is that they do not have enough time to be present in classes and they want to be taught through distance language education. The present study is an investigation of the effect of Iranian EFL learners’ attitude regarding their distance vocabulary gain and retention. 180 participants took part in the present study. Two separate one-way multivariate analysis of variance (one-way MANOVA) were run in order to answer the questions. Results revealed that attitude levels significantly affected Iranian EFL learners’ vocabulary gain and retention. The participants who had higher attitude levels had higher levels of vocabulary gain as well as retention applying audio podcasts plus still pictures and audio podcasts plus animated pictures.