Applying cognitive linguistics to second language idiom learning

<p>Idioms are known to cause great difficulty for second language (L2) learners, who may understand the literal meanings of the constituent words of idioms like (be) waiting in the wings, but often fail to interpret the idiomatic, figurative meaning of the expression. Proponents of Cognitive Linguistics (CL) claim that CL provides a pathway to more systematic and insightful learning of figurative expressions like idioms. They advocate that learners should be informed of the literal underpinning of idiomatic expressions and their relationship to the figurative meaning. This is supported by the results of several experimental studies employing ‘etymological elaboration’. However, little is known about how learners actually experience the CL-style explanations, or about how the learning is affected by other factors such as learners’ perceived transparency of the connection between the literal underpinnings and the idiomatic meanings, and their L1. The research reported in this thesis therefore (1) investigates the effectiveness of etymological elaboration in facilitating idiom comprehension and retention; (2) examines the problems that L2 learners, i.e., native-Chinese EFL learners in this study, experience when they encounter English figurative idioms, and identifies the factors influencing success in learning the meanings of idioms. To achieve these objectives, a mixed methods design was employed. Etymological elaboration was implemented in a teaching experiment involving one-on-one interviews, in which 25 Chinese learners of English were presented with idioms whose meaning they were asked to guess first without and then with the aid of information about their literal underpinnings. After the correct figurative meaning was established, participants rated the transparency of the connection between the literal underpinning and the figurative meaning. One week later, the learners were presented with the same idioms and asked to recall their meaning. Follow-up interviews were also conducted to survey the learners’ experience with and awareness of idioms, and their general attitudes and strategies towards idiom learning. Participants’ responses and their recall of idiomatic meanings were scored by three raters. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses of the interview data investigated the learning process and the outcomes of the teaching experiment. The major findings are: (1) Etymological elaboration can facilitate the interpretation and meaning retention of L2 idioms to a substantial degree; and the L2 idiom learning involves the interplay of multiple factors, including the transparency of the idioms, L1 transfer and cross-cultural differences, learners’ prior L2 lexical knowledge, and their proficiency levels. (2) The degree of transparency of the literal-figurative connection influences meaning retention, especially for the low proficiency learners. However, the mnemonic effect is not confined to idioms that learners find most transparent, but also affects those that are “far-fetched”. (3) The accuracy of meaning inference during the learning phase has a significant impact on memory for the idioms; many errors can be traced back to wrong guesses made in the prior learning phase, and some relate to false equivalents and partial equivalents in the L1. This suggests that trial-and-error learning potentially induces wrong memory traces and that teaching practices should therefore promote more accurate comprehension from the start, in order to facilitate better long-term memory for idioms. (4) More exposure to and better awareness of idioms help EFL learners foster positive attitudes towards idiom learning, which may facilitate the integration and automatization of figurative multiword expressions like idioms in their bilingual mental lexicon, and in turn lead to higher L2 proficiency. The findings of this study have implications for second language teaching and learning. The innovative research design and advanced statistical analyses contribute to the development of language teaching research methodology.</p>

Applying cognitive linguistics to second language idiom learning

<p>Idioms are known to cause great difficulty for second language (L2) learners, who may understand the literal meanings of the constituent words of idioms like (be) waiting in the wings, but often fail to interpret the idiomatic, figurative meaning of the expression. Proponents of Cognitive Linguistics (CL) claim that CL provides a pathway to more systematic and insightful learning of figurative expressions like idioms. They advocate that learners should be informed of the literal underpinning of idiomatic expressions and their relationship to the figurative meaning. This is supported by the results of several experimental studies employing ‘etymological elaboration’. However, little is known about how learners actually experience the CL-style explanations, or about how the learning is affected by other factors such as learners’ perceived transparency of the connection between the literal underpinnings and the idiomatic meanings, and their L1. The research reported in this thesis therefore (1) investigates the effectiveness of etymological elaboration in facilitating idiom comprehension and retention; (2) examines the problems that L2 learners, i.e., native-Chinese EFL learners in this study, experience when they encounter English figurative idioms, and identifies the factors influencing success in learning the meanings of idioms. To achieve these objectives, a mixed methods design was employed. Etymological elaboration was implemented in a teaching experiment involving one-on-one interviews, in which 25 Chinese learners of English were presented with idioms whose meaning they were asked to guess first without and then with the aid of information about their literal underpinnings. After the correct figurative meaning was established, participants rated the transparency of the connection between the literal underpinning and the figurative meaning. One week later, the learners were presented with the same idioms and asked to recall their meaning. Follow-up interviews were also conducted to survey the learners’ experience with and awareness of idioms, and their general attitudes and strategies towards idiom learning. Participants’ responses and their recall of idiomatic meanings were scored by three raters. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses of the interview data investigated the learning process and the outcomes of the teaching experiment. The major findings are: (1) Etymological elaboration can facilitate the interpretation and meaning retention of L2 idioms to a substantial degree; and the L2 idiom learning involves the interplay of multiple factors, including the transparency of the idioms, L1 transfer and cross-cultural differences, learners’ prior L2 lexical knowledge, and their proficiency levels. (2) The degree of transparency of the literal-figurative connection influences meaning retention, especially for the low proficiency learners. However, the mnemonic effect is not confined to idioms that learners find most transparent, but also affects those that are “far-fetched”. (3) The accuracy of meaning inference during the learning phase has a significant impact on memory for the idioms; many errors can be traced back to wrong guesses made in the prior learning phase, and some relate to false equivalents and partial equivalents in the L1. This suggests that trial-and-error learning potentially induces wrong memory traces and that teaching practices should therefore promote more accurate comprehension from the start, in order to facilitate better long-term memory for idioms. (4) More exposure to and better awareness of idioms help EFL learners foster positive attitudes towards idiom learning, which may facilitate the integration and automatization of figurative multiword expressions like idioms in their bilingual mental lexicon, and in turn lead to higher L2 proficiency. The findings of this study have implications for second language teaching and learning. The innovative research design and advanced statistical analyses contribute to the development of language teaching research methodology.</p>

A Semantic Analysis of Absent Subjects of Idioms in Gĩkũyũ

Idioms have been studied for a considerable time by linguists with a view of explaining their meaning. In Gĩkũyũ, for example, the meaning of most idioms can be derived from constituents that form them. However, in some Gĩkũyũ idioms, the meaning is hindered by the absence of the subject in the idiomatic utterance or sentence. It is against this background that this study sought to conduct a semantic analysis on selected idioms in Gĩkũyũ. Thus, the objective of this study was to establish the absent subject in the selected Gĩkũyũ idioms through etymological elaboration and then conduct a semantic analysis of the idioms. The study was based on the Conventional Figurative Language Theory (Dobrovol and Elisabeth). The study employed the descriptive research design and purposively targeted 20 Gĩkũyũ idioms. Data was collected through focus group discussions involving 10 participants who are native speakers of Gĩkũyũ. The study used the content analysis method, which is within the qualitative research paradigm. The data was presented in form of tables and themes. The Gĩkũyũ idiomatic expressions and the established subjects were listed and their gloss provided. Through etymological elaboration, a semantic analysis of the idiomatic expressions was conducted. The findings of the study are that the absence of the subject in idioms greatly hinders their comprehensibility. Further, etymological elaboration is required in order to establish the absent subject. The findings therefore imply that whenever the comprehensibility of an idiom is compromised by the lack of the subject in the utterance, cognitive linguists should process the meaning by using etymological elaboration The study concludes that interpretation of idiomatic expressions in Gĩkũyũ can be enhanced by establishing the absent subject through etymological elaboration which provides clues that aid interpretation .Secondly, semantic analysis of the idioms enhances comprehensibility. The study recommends further research on absent subjects in Gĩkũyũ idioms that were not part of this study. Secondly, other idiom processing strategies for example contextualization (Copper, 2004) can be used to establish the absent subjects in idiomatic expressions. Thirdly, further research can be conducted to establish other aspects of idioms that hinder comprehensibility of idioms not only in Gĩkũyũ but also in other languages. The study will not only provide valuable linguistic knowledge on the study of idioms in Gĩkũyũ but will also encourage further research on idioms in other languages.

Etymological Elaboration in Chéngyǔ 成语 Teaching

As a sub-type of Chinese idioms, chengyu 成语 play an important role in Chinese teaching. This study tested the effectiveness of etymological elaboration in relation to the type of instruction (direct or indirect), the degree of transparency of the chengyu, and the participants’ proficiency level. 48 post-elementary and 53 pre-intermediate learners were divided into three groups, one control and two experimental groups. The experimental groups attended to a 30-minute treatment, then a post-test was submitted to all the participants. Statistical and qualitative analysis revealed that indirect instruction was significantly more effective than direct instruction, independently from the participants’ competence level, and that opaque chengyu were more easily retained than transparent chengyu.

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

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.

A Comparative Study of the Effectiveness of Two Strategies of Etymological Elaboration and Pictorial Elucidation on Idiom Learning: A Case of Young EFL Iranian Learners

<p>This study examined the effect of etymological elaboration, pictorial elucidation, and integration of these 2 strategies on idiom learning by L2 learners. A total number of 80 homogeneous intermediate learners studying English at 3 language institutes in Isfahan, Iran, were selected. The intermediate participants were selected as the result of administering an Oxford Placement Test (OPT) to them. Then, the participants were divided into 4 groups of equal size, that is, control, etymological, pictorial, and etymological/pictorial groups. Before the experiment, all the participants took a pretest to ensure their unfamiliarity with the idioms. The idioms that were known even by 1 participant were crossed out, and finally 30 idioms were chosen for instruction. Then, the experimental groups received their relevant treatments during 15 sessions, whereas the control group learners learned idioms through definitions and example sentences. After the implementation of the experiment, the 4 groups, once again, sat for a test (i.e., the immediate posttest) to see whether the treatments had improved idiom learning. Finally, the data were analyzed by an independent samples <em>t </em>test and one-way between-groups ANOVA. Results showed that all the 3 strategies significantly improved the participants’ idiom learning. Results also pointed to the fact that the etymological elaboration/pictorial elucidation strategy was the most effective strategy on idiom learning.</p>