There are grounds for believing that prompting language learners to infer the meaning of new lexical items is beneficial because inferring the meaning of lexical items and verifying one's inferences invites more cognitive investment than simply being presented with the meanings. However, concerns have been raised over the risk that wrong…

In recent years, despite the fact that many researchers have devoted much of their attention to second language attrition, not much focus has been given to first language attrition (FLA) specifically among Iranian immigrants. The present study attempts to describe FLA in the semantic domain of idiomatic expression and effect of length of residence…

This study of second language idiom acquisition investigates the interaction of two factors, the L1 effect and the effect of supportive context in the L2 input, when both are available to learners. An experiment consisting of a pretest, a computer-assisted instructional treatment session and a posttest employed three idiom types that differed in…

The use of collocation has always been considered as a good yardstick by which the idiomaticity of second language (L2) use is reliably judged. Hence, this study aims at investigating the relationship between optimizing the lexical approach and improving the collocational accuracy and the ability to operate on the idiom principle in the writing of…

The acquisition of idiomatic expressions is one of the primary challenges to learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) in multilingual contexts such as Kenya; yet, the learners are expected to use these expressions in their writing. The study on which this paper is based sought to assess the teaching of English idiomatic expressions in Kenyan…

This article presents a didactic experience carried out in the Degree of Translation and Interpreting (English) at Pablo de Olavide University in Seville and it is part of a project of Innovation and Teaching Development. The main objective is the development in students of a metaphoric competence -- metaphorical awareness and strategies to…

This paper reports an experiment designed to evaluate an attempt to improve the effectiveness of an existing L2 idiom-learning tool. In this tool, learners are helped to associate the abstract, idiomatic meaning of expressions such as "jump the gun" (act too soon) with their original, concrete meaning (e.g. associating "jump the…

The present study investigated the effect of context on the strategies the EFL learners utilized to process idioms. To do so, ten Iranian intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to two groups who then attended a think-aloud session. The 5 subjects in the first group were exposed to an animated cartoon including 23 unfamiliar idioms while…

To improve vocabulary learning and teaching in ELT settings, two questionnaires are designed and directed to more than 100 students and teachers in one of China's key universities. The findings suggest that an enhanced awareness of cultural difference, metaphorical competence, and learners' autonomy in vocabulary acquisition will effectively…