Islamic Azad University of Rasht

Faculty of humanities

English Language Department

 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the M.A. degree in English Teaching as A Foreign Language

 On Etymological Elaboration and its Potential Effect on the Iranian EFL Learner’s Knowledge of Opaque Idioms

Supervisor

Dr. HamedBabaieShalmani

February, 2015

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Table of contents

Title

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Role-Play

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Abstract

On Etymological Elaboration and its Potential Effect on the Iranian EFL Learner’s Knowledge of Opaque Idioms.

Idioms are much more than ‘decorative icing’ to the language; they are an integral feature of both written and spoken English. The ability to comprehend and use idiomatic language is one of the distinguishing marks of native-like competence. In this research study, the target population of this study were 60 female EFL students at intermediate level of proficiency. All of the participants were native speakers of Persian studying at the Iran Language Institute of Rasht; Iran. After calculating OPT results and validating the idioms test through pilot study, the participants were divided into two groups to receive different treatments: Control Group:received no Etymological knowledge, but they received treatment through a conventional method, (definition of the opaque idioms with examples).Experimental Group:received instruction through etymological elaboration, (Etymological Information with examples). The research question sought to investigate which technique of teaching idioms yields better results in improving learners’ opaque idioms knowledge. The results of the opaque idioms posttest indicated that the group instructed through etymological elaboration had better performance, the group receiving explicit instruction of opaque idioms’ definitions had lower performance. However, the T-Test procedure revealed that the difference between the performances of the two groups were statistically significant. In other words, etymological information of the opaque idioms had significantly different effect on the learners’ knowledge of opaque idioms.Based on the results, it can be concluded that etymological information of idioms has differential effects on the knowledge of opaque idioms of Iranian EFL learners. In addition, etymological information is conducive to Iranian intermediate learners’ knowledge of opaque idioms.

Chapter 1

Statement of the problem

1.0 introduction

According to Glucksberg (2001) the meaning of the idioms can be guessed from the meaning of one of their subcomponents but usually the meaning is completely different, this is the reason why they are so tricky for students. Boers (1992) stated that it is inevitable for students to face problems dealing with idioms by knowing this fact that their meanings are not clear and are motivated by their original, literal usage and the meanings of idioms cannot be attained directly at the first look and the tricky nature of idioms makes students face problems extracting their meanings.

Since L2 learners have difficulties in learning and using the phrasal words and idioms, and the traditional methods used by teachers do not make significant changes in L2 learner’s idiom learning, new techniques for teaching idioms to L2 learners are required. By the emergence of new approaches to teach a second language, finding a good method to teach idioms has been the main concern of some researchers (e.g., Elena & Moreno, 2001; Cook, Fazly, & Stevenson, 2007). To the researchers best knowledge; few studies have been conducted to examine the effect of different methods of teaching idioms to EFL learners.

As a result, this study is designed to investigate the effect of etymological information ofidioms on Iranian EFL learners’ knowledge of opaque idioms.