The Role of L1 in L2 Idiom Comprehension (original) (raw)
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LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES AS PREDICTORS OF L2 IDIOMS COMPREHENSION
The present study was an attempt to investigate types of language learning strategies as predictors of L 2 idioms comprehension. The participants were 112 male and female Iranian undergraduate B.A. and M.A. students majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, English Translation, and English Literature at the University of Qom; Islamic Azad University, Takestan Branch; and Mofid non-profit University. Data were gathered through the Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency (MTELP), an idiom comprehension test, and the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) and analyzed using multiple regression procedure. The results showed that cognitive and affective learning strategies were the best predictors of L 2 idioms comprehension. In other words, cognitive and affective learning strategies together could account for approximately 43% of the total variance in L 2 idioms comprehension. These findings may have implications for language learners, teachers, researchers, syllabus designers, and materials developers. Since cognitive learning strategies were found to be the most commonly used strategies by successful idiom learners in this study, they should be taken into account more in L 2 idiom comprehension. At the same time, teachers should make learners aware of affective and social strategies because they have not received much attention in classrooms.
Exploring L2 Idiom Comprehension: A Case of Thai EFL Learners
2018
This study explores idiom comprehension strategies employed by Thai EFL learners when they dealt with English idiomatic expressions. Ten university students whose native language is Thai were asked to verbalize their thoughts in two tasks. Task 1 was a fill-in-the-gap exercise which required the participants to complete 15 English idioms whose constituents included animal vocabulary items and to identify the Thai equivalents. Task 2 consisted of 15 dialogs, and the participants were asked to supply English idioms in the blank, determine their interpersonal functions, and match them with the Thai counterparts. The results show that the most frequently-used strategies in Task 1 and Task 2 were referring to prior knowledge and discussing and analyzing the context respectively. Moreover, the participants tended to rely on L1 to deal with English idioms as reflected in translating an idiom literally and referring to an L1 idiom. The results also imply that the participants seemed to use ...
The Effect of Context on the EFL Learners’ Idiom Processing Strategies
English Language Teaching, 2012
The present study investigated the effect of context on the strategies the EFL learners utilized to process idioms. To do so, ten Iranian intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to two groups who then attended a think-aloud session. The 5 subjects in the first group were exposed to an animated cartoon including 23 unfamiliar idioms while their counterparts in the second group were exposed to the written version of the same material. The subjects of the two groups were asked to verbally report their thought processes when trying to define the unfamiliar idioms. The data thus gathered form the small sample revealed 8 major strategies which were then used to prepare a questionnaire to be administered to a larger sample. The new sample included 60 subjects randomly assigned to two groups of 30.The first group as in the think-aloud session was exposed to the animated cartoon while the other read the respective script. The subjects in both groups were asked to check the strategies they resorted to when guessing the meaning of unfamiliar idioms. The results of the study showed both inter and intra-group differences confirming the effect of context on the strategies applied in processing unfamiliar idioms.
Asian Social Science, 2010
This paper primarily focused on the description of the results of a study conducted with sixty Iranian adult EFL learners to investigate how the reading strategies and pragmatic elements are likely to govern and characterize the comprehension and interpretation process of English idioms with and without contextualized reading. It also intended to determine the role of cultural mappings and the extent to which Iranian EFL learners' knowledge of cultural idioms is affected by their L1 when they try to construct their own meanings. The researchers came up with some interesting inferences about such theme-based patterns of idiomatic expressions through descriptive statistics and analysis of the participants' metacognitive comments in four phases of the study.
Issues in Language Teaching (ILT), 2018
The objectives of the present study were threefold: First, it sought to investigate difficulties Iranian EFL high school learners face to understand English idioms. Second, it attempted to explore intermediate EFL learners' language learning strategy preferences to comprehend idioms. Third, it aimed to examine whether there was a significant difference between successful and less successful students' strategy use in idiom comprehension. To this end, 200 Iranian male and female students from the three grades of different senior high schools in Qom, Iran, were selected through convenience sampling. They responded to a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire (Alhaysony, 2017), investigating the challenges of idiom comprehension. Afterwards, they took the Oxford Quick Placement Test. Ninety-eight of them were selected as intermediate learners. Third, they took a multiple-choice test on idiom comprehension, developed by the researcher, and responded to the Strategy Inventory for La...
Recently the notion of conceptual fluency has attracted much attention owing to its potential to native-like use of foreign language. It has conclusively been shown that comprehending the concepts of the target language, L2 learners may acquire the ability to speak as native speakers. Situated within the framework of developing conceptual fluency of L2 learners, this study examined whether the type of instruction has an effect on the conceptual fluency development of beginner level adult EFL learners. The participants consisting of 38 beginner level preparatory students of School of Foreign Languages of Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University were divided into two groups. The experimental group was exposed to a translation method rested on the comparison of L1 and L2 concepts to learn idioms taken from the songs while the control group learned these idioms through traditional translation method. The data included students' one minute response paper gathered after each treatment which lasted 3 weeks and a 20 item-multiple-choice post-test. An ANCOVA analysis of the post-test scores showed that the experimental group accomplished better than the control group. The content analysis of the students' one minute response paper also highlighted that translation method rested on the comparison of L1 and L2 concepts increased the awareness of the participants towards the non-literal meaning of English idioms. It appears that translation method comparing L1 and L2 concepts might contribute to the conceptual fluency development of beginner level adult L2 learners.
The Effect of Context on the Iranian EFL Learners’ Idiom Retention
2012
Idioms, forms of figurative language, are used pervasively in both spoken and written discourse. However, mainly due to their figurative nature, they are often considered difficult to learn. The present study tried to first of all briefly investigate the language learners' attitudes toward learning L2 idioms. It then compared the effect of written vs. video-graphic contexts on the language learners' long-term and short-term retention of idioms. To know about the language learners' attitudes to learning English idioms and their relevant experiences, a questionnaire was administered to a group of Iranian EFL learners. The results of the questionnaire proved their highly positive view toward learning idioms and their need for helpful and facilitating learning strategies. At the second stage of the study, two similar groups of intermediate EFL learners were exposed to unfamiliar idioms through a story in written and video-graphic contexts. The subjects were also given the definitions on a separate sheet to check. The subjects' long-term and short-term retention were then tested and compared. The results of the study showed no significant difference between the
Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2018
Due to the significant role of idioms in second language learning and the difficulties EFL learners experience in learning them, finding ways to improve the learning process of idioms is of high importance. The present study investigated the effect of audio-visual vs. written contexts on idiom learning of Iranian Intermediate EFL learners. It was also an attempt to identify which context would lead to the language learners’ enhanced idiom comprehension. Particularly, the study explored the effect of audio-visual context on learners’ idiom learning, the effect of written-context on learners’ idiom learning, and finally the difference between idiom improvements of learners who were exposed to audio-visual compared to their counterparts in the written group. The participants were English language learners (L2) at Language Academy in Isfahan, Iran. They were all female, Persian native speakers. Their age range was between 19 and 26. Initially, a total of 80 EFL students were selected to...
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2013
One of the most challenging parts of learning a foreign/second language is vocabulary, and perhaps the most difficult part of the vocabulary for EFL learners is learning both literal and figurative meanings of idioms. This study was an attempt to find out how EFL learners make a mental image of English idioms as compared with native English speakers. For this purpose two hypotheses were formulated as: 1) prior knowledge of an idiomatic phrase figurative meaning does not influence the mental image of native (American) and non-native (Iranian) English speakers based on phrase's literal meaning, and 2) nonliteral interpretation of figurative phrases does not help native (American) and non-native (Iranian) English speakers conceptualize the literal meanings of idiomatic expressions.After the data analysis the following results were obtained: 1) prior knowledge of an idiomatic phrase figurative meaning can influence the mental image of native English speakers and native Persian speakers based on phrase's literal meaning, and 2) nonliteral interpretation of figurative phrases is not effective in terms of conceptualizing the literal meaning of idiomatic phrases neither for Persian speakers nor for English speakers. The results of this study can be beneficial for L2 teachers and students as well as for material developers.
The present study was conducted to investigate the impact of etymological elaboration instruction on EFL learners' comprehension of idioms in short reading texts. Out of 108 EFL female learners studying at Islamic Azad University of Mashhad (Khorasan Razavi province, Iran), based on the results of an Oxford Placement Test (OPT), 60 homogenous learners at upper-intermediate level (with the age range of 18-26 years old) were selected based on convenience sampling method. Afterwards, they were randomly divided into control and experimental groups, each consisting of 30 learners. To make sure that the participants were more or less at the same level according to their comprehension of idioms, a researcher-made test was administered to both control and experimental groups to make a judgment about learners' idiomatic knowledge of idioms in short reading texts, and the learners' progress after offering the treatment. The treatment of the study took five one-hour sessions, during which the participants in both groups received five idioms using different instructional techniques, i.e., 'the etymological elaboration instruction of idioms' technique for the experimental group and traditional technique (rote learning) for the control group. The results of independent samples T-test revealed that the experimental group in the post-test outperformed the control group. The results of the paired samples T-test, moreover, showed a significantly higher improvement for the experimental group compared to the control group. It was concluded that knowledge of idioms' etymology generally raised Iranian EFL learners' comprehension of idiomatic expressions in short reading texts.