Naslov
Turning the tide -Why culturally motivated idioms should be included in EFL curricula

Autori
Jelčić, Jasmina

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
9th Annual International Conference on Languages & Linguistics

Mjesto i datum
Atena, Grčka, 04.07.2016. - 07.07.2016

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
idiom teaching, cultural motivation, etymological elaboration

Sažetak
Idiomatic expressions have long been termed as one of the most notorious language items to be taught to foreign learners of English, mainly due to their opaque nature that disallows the reader to infer the meaning of the entire phrase. Even more so, those idioms which are motivated by cultural factors and stem from a cultural domain which is present in the source language but not in the target language can impede the understanding of the idioms even further. It is for that reason why the purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the nature of idiom comprehension among Croatian learners of English who are at upper- intermediate or advanced levels of study. The research was performed on two such groups of learners where the experimental group was treated by means of etymological background for each expression which was provided for them during their English course. Respectively, the control group was merely presented with idiomatic expressions and were instructed to remember as many expressions as they can (in the same manner the experimental group was). Both groups were retested after a certain period in order to test the retention and see whether the elaboration of etymological background exerted any effect on the results. The study therefore addresses the issue of idiom comprehension with regard to the etymological background which was provided for the learner. The research question our hypothesis aims to answer is whether those learners to whom the etymological nature of a given idiom was explained can understand and recall the idiom better than those learners to whom the idiom was presented in the traditional manner of learning vocabulary items. The purpose of the research is to discard the traditional belief that culturally motivated, or otherwise known as oligosemic idioms, should not be included in EFL vocabulary teaching.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

POVEZANOST RADA