The Effect of Explicit Teaching of Idioms on Strategy Choice for EFL Learners in a Reading Comprehension Test

Abstract

Research has shown that students tend to choose their preferred strategy when they are asked to find the meaning of idiomatic phrases in a text. This study investigates how English learners choose their preferred strategies to find the correct definition of idiomatic phrases. Thirty-three learners of English were given a reading passage which consisted of twenty idiomatic expressions, and their strategy choice in finding the correct definition of each phrase was examined. The participants were divided into two groups. The experimental group (with seventeen students) was taught idioms explicitly during the course and the control group (with sixteen students) did not receive any explicit instruction in learning idioms. The results showed that among the given strategies, the group which was taught explicitly tended to choose “using dictionary” more often whereas the other group preferred to “ask the teacher”. As Rodríguez and Winnberg (2013) observed, learners try different strategies and techniques when they encounter a problem and as teachers it is important to notice that every student has a particular way of learning. This study suggests that teaching idioms explicitly should be combined with implicit learning in EFL contexts. Furthermore, learners need more exposure (explicit or implicit) to the meaning and usage of idiomatic phrases in order to master this complex field of learning