Teaching Idiomatic Expressions: An Efficacy Juxtaposition of Four Techniques

This study aimed at determining the short- and long-term effectiveness of teaching idiom techniques, such as definition and exemplification, concept mapping, story-telling, and etymological elaboration on iranian efl learners’ interpretation and retention of the idioms. to this aim, 106 pre-intermediate learners of english as a foreign language at a private language institute took part in the study. a sample from cambridge ielts series was administered to ensure the homogeneity of the participants. according to the results, a total number of 80 students were selected as the final participants who were randomly assigned to four experimental groups: group a (definitions and examples), group b (concept mapping), group c (story-telling) and group d (etymological elaboration). in addition to the homogeneity test, three researcher-made tests as the pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test were used in the study. each group of the participants received the treatment for 12 sessions and took part in the pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test. a one-way anova was run to compare the performance of the groups. the results indicated that the most gains were achieved by story-telling, followed by etymological elaboration. the findings imply implications for teachers, syllabus designers, and materials developers in using appropriate instructional methods for teaching idioms.

Teaching Idiomatic Expressions: An Efficacy Juxtaposition of Four Techniques

This study aimed at determining the short- and long-term effectiveness of teaching idiom techniques, such as definition and exemplification, concept mapping, story-telling, and etymological elaboration on Iranian EFL learners’ interpretation and retention of the idioms. To this aim, 106 pre-intermediate learners of English as a foreign language at a private language institute took part in the study. A sample from Cambridge IELTS Series was administered to ensure the homogeneity of the participants. According to the results, a total number of 80 students were selected as the final participants who were randomly assigned to four experimental groups: group A (definitions and examples), group B (concept mapping), group C (story-telling) and group D (etymological elaboration). In addition to the homogeneity test, three researcher-made tests as the pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test were used in the study. Each group of the participants received the treatment for 12 sessions and took part in the pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test. A one-way ANOVA was run to compare the performance of the groups. The results indicated that the most gains were achieved by story-telling, followed by etymological elaboration. The findings imply implications for teachers, syllabus designers, and materials developers in using appropriate instructional methods for teaching idioms.