the present study investigated the effect of the two vocabulary teaching techniques in est, namely the use of translation and the use of visual aids as two separate vocabulary teaching techniques. to answer the question of the study, a pretest (michigan test) was administered to the 58 randomly selected est students at khajeh nasiredin tusi university, faculty of mechanics. after the homogeneity of the subjects was ensured, the two different teaching techniques were applied to the two groups of the ss. also, owing to the basic aim of the study, the researcher constructed a new vocabulary est test. after that, the test was administered to the subjects as their posttest. the data obtained from the subjects, test scores were analyzed using sas package. the findings indicated that group 1 (the group taught through translation techcique) showed superiority in test scores over the group 2 (the group taught through visual aids). implications of this study for teaching and for further research are also discussed.