Due to the importance of academic vocabulary for university students and its intricate relationship with the reading skill, this study set out to investigate the effect of mobile assisted language learning on university students' academic vocabulary learning and retention on the one hand, and to see the effect of this approach to vocabulary instruction on their reading proficiency on the other. To this end, two groups of EFL learners majoring in different engineering fields took part in this study, one as the experimental group and the other as the control group. They were taught 320 head words of Academic Word List during sixteen weeks of experiment via different approaches. The experimental group received them through SMS and the control group learned them by using a dictionary. The results of the vocabulary and reading test that was administered at the end of the study showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in reading test but there was not any significant difference between the two groups in terms of vocabulary retention. However, a delayed post-test showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in vocabulary retention. The results of the present study implies that SMS as a medium of teaching vocabulary can have a significant influence on vocabulary retention and can help learners to transfer vocabulary items to their long-term memory. In addition, given the interrelationship of vocabulary and reading, SMS can enhance both their vocabulary knowledge and reading proficiency.
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