Impact of L2 Film Instruction and English Idiom Etymology on Iranian EFL learners’ Idiom Learning

Research in English Language Pedagogy

مقاله 5، دوره 1، شماره 1، آذر 2013، صفحه 45-61   

نویسندگان

Firooz Reisi Gahroei^* ؛ Omid Tabatabaei

Islamic Azad University, Najafabad Branch

چکیده

By the emergence of new approaches to teach a second language, finding a good
method to teach idioms has been the main concern of some researchers (e.g., Elena
& Moreno, 2001 Cook, Fazly, & Stevenson, 2007). To the researcher›s best
knowledge few studies have been conducted to examine the effect of different
methods of teaching idioms to EFL learners. As a result, this study was designed to
investigate the effect of teaching the etymology of idioms and using movie clips
containing idioms, as two methods of teaching, on the quality of L2 learners› idiom
learning. Serving this purpose, teaching idioms through their etymologies and
movie clips and also learners› attitudes toward
s using such methods (through
using questionnaires) were taken into consideration. After administering a
standard language proficiency test (OPT), 90 intermediate, out of a pile of 154 L2
learners, were selected and assigned to three groups randomly, two experimental
(one etymology and one movie clip group) and one control group. All the groups
were given two idiom multiple-choice tests, one as the pre-test and the other one
as the post-test. In one experimental group (A), idioms were taught together with
their etymologies and in the other experimental group (B), the same idioms were
taught by displaying movie clips containing the idioms, while the control group (C)
followed the traditional class activities using synonyms and antonyms. The results
of one-way ANOVA and post hoc tests revealed that the participants in etymology
and movie clip groups had better performance in post-test than in pretest.
Moreover, the results of Chi-square revealed that, on the whole, L2 learners had
positive attitudes towards using etymology and movie clips in idiom learning.

کلیدواژه‌ها

Etymology؛ figurative language؛ Fixed Expressions؛ Idiomaticity؛ Idioms؛ Movie clips

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