The Effect of Learning English Idioms Using Scaffolding Strategy Through Situated Learning Supported by Augmented Reality

Abstract

Mastering English as a second language had been challenging for Taiwanese students, to top it up with understanding English idioms just adds fuel to the fire. Without the awareness and knowledge about idioms, students would be prone to take the idioms as its literal meaning, which most often would not be accurate. This would lead to students misunderstanding the true meaning of the context. Past research had shown that situated learning could ease the learning process for students and form beneficial knowledge. Augmented reality (AR) is useful in facilitating situated learning, not only it engages students in the learning context, but it was also proven to be effective in improving students' performance. Furthermore, scaffolding strategy, a specific type of mediational tool used for learning, had been proven to effectively assist students in overcome challenges during the learning process. Therefore, this research designed a learning application to improve learners' learning performance in learning English idioms, using the assistance of scaffolding strategy in a situated learning settings which is supported by AR. The research results had shown that the learning application is effective in assisting university students in learning about English idioms.