چکیده:
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of context onlearning idioms among 60 Iranian female advanced English learners. To this end, the researcher assigned the participants to two experimental groups and one control group: Group 1 (first experimental group, the extended-context group), Group 2 (second experimental group, the limited-context group) and Group 3 (control group or the decontextualized group). First a 50-item idiom test was constructed using Vocabulary Knowledge scale (adopted from Wesche and Paribakht, 1993) and answered by the participants. The results of this test revealed that thirty idioms were not at all familiar to the participants. So these 30 idioms were selected as the target idioms. Then, the researchers applied two types of treatment to the participants in groups 1 and 2. Group 1 was taught idioms in extended-context through listening to short stories including the target idioms, Group 2 in the limited-context through listening to single sentences including the target idioms, and Control group (Group 3) was taught idioms through their decontextualized definitions of the target idioms. The analysis of the results of immediate and delayed post-test showed that extended contexts had significant influence on the participants‟ idiom learning and retention. Pedagogical implications are provided.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"The analysis of the results of immediate and delayed post-test showed that extended contexts had significant influence on the participants‟ idiom learning and retention.
Keywords: Idioms, Extended context, Limited context, Learning, Retention Introduction Schmitt (2000) and Read (2000) believe that vocabulary which consists of grammaticalised lexis not lexicalized grammar should be placed at the centre of language teaching and learning curricula.
So one of the important problems with which language educators have to deal is to find effective ways to help learners learn idiomatic expressions or vocabulary acquisition and their long-term retention.
The results of the delayed post-test which again confirmed the superiority of the first group, supported Schouten-van Parreren (1985), Haastrup (1991) and Mondria (1996) who believe that the context aids the learner to infer the meaning of the unfamiliar words correctly and leads to better retention than those in which the meaning of a word is presented in a list.
One reasonable explanation for the retention effect of inferencing by using contextual clues is related to deep processing where, according to Anderson (1990), Ellis (1995) and Hulstijn (2001), elaborations are established among the unknown word and idiom, their meanings, the context, and the background knowledge of the learner.
One reasonable explanation for the retention effect of inferencing by using contextual clues is related to deep processing where, according to Anderson (1990), Ellis (1995) and Hulstijn (2001), elaborations are established among the unknown word and idiom, their meanings, the context, and the background knowledge of the learner."