This study aims at investigating teaching of idioms by means of illustrations and teaching of idioms by means of definitions. The informants of the experiment are learners of English in a Swedish high school. The 58 informants of this experiment were tested on a total of 19 idioms. These idioms were carefully chosen in order to make sure that they would not already be known by the informants. Another key factor while choosing the idioms was the possibility to find appropriate illustrations for these idioms. The chosen illustrations depict either the literal or the metaphorical meaning of the idioms. The informants were administered one pre-test and two post-tests (short- and long-term retention tests) to measure the retention rate. The pre-test was used to check if both groups had similar knowledge of the selected idioms and therefore could be comparable. The results of this experiment show that students taught by the use of illustrations had a better short- and long-term retention rate than students taught only by the use of definitions. In both the short- and long-term retention test, informants taught by the use of illustrations outperformed informants taught through definition by more than 10%. This study therefore indicates that the use of illustrations while teaching should not be neglected by teachers and can be a powerful tool to enhance students’ retention of chosen items such as vocabulary or idioms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-157118 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Xerri, Sabrina |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Engelska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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