تاثیر بار درگیری ذهنی بر میزان یادسپاری عبارت‌های اصطلاحی از سوی فراگیران زبان انگلیسی

این مطالعه که با بهره گیری از فرضیۀ »بار درگیری ذهنی « و از سوی هالستاین و لوفر (2001) مطرح شده است، تلاش می کند تا تاثیر بار درگیری برانگیخته با تمرین را در میزان یادسپاری عبارات اصطلاحی، از سوی فراگیران زبان انگلیسی، بررسی کند. برای این منظور، 60 نفر از فراگیران زن زبان انگلیسی از آموزشگاه زبانی در شهر تهران، در این مطالعه شرکت کردند. پانزده اصطلاح از طریق تمریناتی که سطوح مختلفی از درگیری بار ذهنی را طلب می کرد، به سه گروه از فراگیران آموزش داده شد. این تمرینات شامل تمرین درک مطلب، تمرین پر کردن جای خالی و نگارش بود. سپس، میزان یادسپاری این عبارات اصطلاحی از طریق دو پس آزمون اولیه و متاخر سنجیده شد. نتایج، رابطۀ مستقیمی را بین یادگیری برانگیخته با تمرین و یادسپاری اصطلاحات از سوی اعضا نشان داد. همچنین، یافته ها نشان داد که یادسپاری در تمرینات نگارش بالاترین، در تمرینات پر کردن جای خالی متوسط و در تمرینات درک مطلب کم ترین میزان را داشت. این مطالعه فوایدی برای تحلیل، آموزش و طراحی تمرینات دارد.

The Impact of Involvement Load on Iranian EFL Learners’ Retention of Idiomatic Expressions

Capitalizing on Hulstijn and Laufer rsquo;s (2001) notion of Involvement Load Hypothesis, this study aimed to investigate the impact of taskinduced involvement load on Iranian EFL learners rsquo; retention of idiomatic expressions. The main concern of present study is to explore if principles of involvement load hypothesis hold true when applied to learning idioms. The research questions formulated to achieve the objectives include: 1.What is EFL learners rsquo; retention rate of idiomatic expressions for the readingcomprehension task with involvement index 1? 2. What is EFL learners rsquo; retention rate of idiomatic expressions for the fillinthe blanks task with involvement index 2? 3. What is EFL learners rsquo; retention rate of idiomatic expressions for the composition task with involvement index 3? 4. Does Involvement Load play any significant role in the retention of idioms of Iranian EFL learners? Given the fact that the depth of processing a word is the key component in vocabulary learning, it could be assumed that composition tasks designed to develop idiomatic expressions in EFL learners, enjoy much greater retention rate, hence attesting to the effectiveness of involvement load on the retention of idiomatic expressions. To this end, 60 female upperintermediate Iranian EFL students in an English language institute in Tehran took part in the study. Twenty idioms were taught to three groups of students through tasks that induced different levels of involvement load, namely reading comprehension, fill in the blanks and composition tasks. To conduct the statistical analysis, fifteen idioms were picked from among the ones presented in the pretest, so that learners rsquo; prior knowledge of some idioms was taken care of. The retention of the chosen idiomatic expressions was then tested via an immediate and a delayed posttest. MANOVA was run to compare the groups rsquo; performance on the three tasks on the posttest and delayed posttest. Scheffe rsquo;s test was then used as a posthoc comparison test to compare the groups on posttest and delayed posttest. The results pointed to a direct relationship between the involvement as induced by the tasks and participants rsquo; retention of idioms, implying the fact that the higher involvement load of a task, the higher the retention of the task will be. Accordingly, the findings indicated that retention rate was the highest in the composition task, lower in the fill in the blanks, and the lowest in the reading comprehension task. The study has implications for task analysis, task instruction, and task design; Curriculum developers may benefit from the findings of this study when engaged in designing courses related to idiomatic expressions. English teachers could be more cognizant of varying involvement indexes in tasks and their effect on the retention rate of their learners. Eventually, language learners will be informed of the optimal amount of time and effort needed for mastering idiomatic expressions.