The Effect of Two Attention-drawing Techniques on Learning English Idioms

Abstract

This study investigated the effectiveness of three methods for teaching idioms. Sixty two intermediate EFL learners from a language school in Kerman were divided into three classes to be taught in three conditions: the etymological elaboration experimental group (N=20) was taught 16 target idioms in a text along with the etymology of each idiom; the typographic salience experimental group (N=20) was taught the same text as the previous group but the 16 target idioms were in boldfaced type and red; and the traditional control group (N=22) was taught the same text in plain typeface with no etymology for idioms. The participants in the three groups were not informed about the posttest and the delayed posttest. The results of the comparison between the posttest and the delayed posttest scores of all the three groups indicate that the participants in etymological elaboration outperformed the participants in the other two groups in terms of idioms’ retention and recall. These findings are suggestive that the most effective method of teaching idioms vis-a-vis their retention and recall is etymological elaboration.