definition

This study investigated the relationship between teaching L2 semantic tasks (collocation vs. definition) in vocabulary achievement of Iranian intermediate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. To this end, 60 students at intermediate level studying in the Simin Institute were selected from a total number of 100 participants based on their performance on Oxford Placement Test (OPT). After ensuring the criterion of homogeneity, they were randomly assigned to two experimental and one control group each comprising 20 participants. Before starting the treatment, a pretest was administered to find out learners’ vocabulary knowledge. Then the experimental groups were instructed to use collocation and definition in vocabulary learning for 5 sessions while the control group received no treatment. After the end of the treatment, the same pre-test was administered to all groups as a post-test. Analysis of the results of three paired sample T-test and a one way ANOVA showed that the experimental group that received collocation task outperformed the other two groups (control group and second experimental group) in the post-test. It was concluded that teaching collocation task had a positive effect on learners’ vocabulary knowledge.

By interrupting the traditional approach to the distinctiveness of the order of knowledge and the order of nature (which was the procedure of many philosophers like Aristotle, and his scholastic disciples, more especially of Thomas Aquinas and even Descartes and Cartesian), and acquiring a unified science, Spinoza changes the customary order of philosophizing and begins his famous book, Ethics, with a treatise on God, nature or substance, a being that, is assumed, first by nature, i.e. in the order of nature, but not first for us, i.e. in the order of knowledge. To accomplish this procedure, Spinoza, on the one hand attributes the extension to the God and on the other hand, chose the geometrical method that implies definitions, axioms and postulates that harmonize with his procedure, to expose his views. In this article, by analyzing Spinoza’s geometrical method, we try to show that how Spinoza achieved his methodological intentions.