摘要：Vocabulary development is one of the most important aspects of second language acquisition. The objective of the study was to examine the effects of vocabulary learning through WhatsApp on L2 students’ vocabulary knowledge at a university in Pakistan. Academic Wordlist (AWL) was used for the treatment of the experimental group. A quasi-experimental study was conducted with sixty participants divided into the experimental (n=30) and control (n=30) groups. The treatment for the experimental group comprised 10 weeks of WhatsApp vocabulary input from the chosen word lists. The data collection instrument was the words associates test developed by Read (1993) and was administered as pre-test and post-test. The independent t-test showed a significant treatment effect on the experimental group, and improvement was observed in the mean score. When the post-test mean scores of the control and experimental groups were compared, findings indicated that there was a difference in the mean scores; control group M = 72.10 (SD = 10.93), Experimental Group M= 84.26 (SD = 10.53) mean the difference between groups (M = 12.16, p < .05). The primary conclusion of this study is that the WhatsApp vocabulary input did significantly help improve the experimental group’s mean score, illustrating the impact of the WhatsApp vocabulary input on the group’s vocabulary knowledge. This, essentially, points to the fact that this method for vocabulary learning may be recommended for L2 learners and may be used to improve their vocabulary in line with the AWL.
