The effect of imageability on efl leaners’ comprehension of english idioms

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HO CHI MINH UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature THE EFFECT OF IMAGEABILITY ON EFL LEANERS’ COMPREHENSION OF ENGLISH IDIOMS A annual paper submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature By Nguyễn Hồng Trâm Anh Supervised by Phó Phương Dung, PHD HOCHIMINH CITY, APRIL 2014 CONTENTS Introduction: Definitions of idioms: 3 Idioms and learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL): 3.1 The importance of learning idioms: 3.1.1 Native speaker’s use of idioms: 3.1.2 Effective communication: 3.1.3 Subtle meanings and intentions: 3.1.4 Conciseness: 3.2 Difficulties in teaching and learning idioms: 3.2.1 Non-literalness/Arbitrariness: 3.2.2 Limited exposure to idioms: 3.2.3 Incorrect use: 3.2.4 Lack of appropriate materials: 3.2.5 Lack of learning methods: 3.2.6 Unawareness of the importance of idioms: 3.3 Transparency of idioms: 3.4 Imageability of idioms: 3.4.1 Conceptual metaphors: 3.4.2 Semantics of idiom’s elements: 3.4.3 Long-term retention: 3.5 Conceptual framework: A new strategy for enhancing comprehension and long-term retention: Methodology: 4.1 Research questions: 10 4.2 Research instrument: 10 4.3 Research design: 10 4.3.1 Selection of idioms: 10 4.3.2 Selection of participants: 12 4.3.3 Data collection procedure: 12 4.3.4 Data analysis procedure: 13 4.4 Pilot experiment: 14 Conclusion: 18 Appendices 19 References 23 Introduction: It cannot be denied that learning idioms are difficult and often overlooked; notwithstanding, idioms have already become such a significant component of English that they become one of the most important indicators of learner’s communicative competence For that reason, the ability to understand idioms is essentially required from English learners, especially those who are at higher level of studying Although there are a variety of methods employing different aspects and features of idioms in this field of promoting idiom learning, some share a common make-up: the exploitation of the “guessability” of idioms In contrast to the traditional treatment of idioms conceptualizing idioms as arbitrary “frozen” expressions (Keysar and Bly, 1995, p.90) whose meaning cannot be deduced from their constituents, recent studies on acquisition of idioms have raised a new perception basically proposing that the link between an idiomatic expression and its meaning is no arbitrary and that the meanings of idioms can actually be inferred by looking at the component words The fact that the comprehension of idioms somewhat depends on the non-arbitrary connection between the literal meaning of constituent parts and the global figurative meaning has to with the notion of transparency – another salient attribute of idioms beside non-literalness According to Keysar and Bly (1995), there are two main sources contributing to the transparency of idioms One is the conceptual metaphors underlying idioms and the other is the semantics of the idioms’ elements, both of which betoken that, more or less, there is some degree of relevance between the superficial parts of the idiomatic string and its intrinsic meaning Both of them shed some lights on another more interesting feature of idioms and the focus of this research as well: imageablity of idioms Therefore, maybe it would be sensible not to distinguish but regard conceptual metaphors and literal word meaning as systematic mechanisms cooperating with each other to generate the overall meaning an idiom The two existent strategies should be combined and upscaled into a more effective strategy exploiting the imagery of idioms In fact, there are some researches that have examined the imageablity of idioms Their results suggest that the imagery of the words may increase the transparency of idioms as it is “found to be good predictor(s) of learning” (Steinel, Hulstijn & Steinel, 2007, p.454) However, there are few studies that really pay attention to the application of imagery in idiom instruction, let alone using it as hints for For that reason, from the viewpoint of enhancing idiom comprehension and retention, there is clearly a need to conduct a study that makes efforts in experimenting the strategy of using imageability as useful clues in working out the meanings of idioms Objectives of the study: This research attempts to provide both teachers and learners with a strategy to reduce the burden of teaching and learning idioms Adopting a cognitive approach regarding idioms as being motivated by the images stemming from the underlying conceptual metaphors and the semantics of the idiom’s elements, this paper sets its goal on the establishment of a new strategy employing idioms’ imagery as an optimal way to retrieve their meanings If the following theoretical discussion and experimental case study confirm the effectiveness of the method in making sense of incongruous idioms, it will become a remedy for the comprehension problems Hopefully, with this method, learners will be able to improve their idiomatic competence and no longer find idioms “hard nuts to crack” but actually “a piece of cake” Research questions: Since imageability are believed to have facilitating effect on learners’ process of inferring idioms’ meanings, the researcher attempts to answer the following question: Will learners’ performance on inferring the meanings of idioms with enclosed imageable hints be better than performance on inferring the meanings of those idioms without enclosed imageable hints? Significance of the study: Idioms are remarkable obstacles; therefore, a useful tool should be provided with as view to minimizing the failure of idiom comprehension and instruction That is what this research offers: a new strategy employing imageability of idioms as hints to identify their meanings Since not many international and local studies take imageabilty as their main focus and put it in teaching/learning application as hints for inferring idioms’ meanings, this specify study would be a practical contribution not only to the field of enhancing of learners’ comprehension of idioms in particular and their figurative competence in general but also to the notion of imageability Definitions of idioms: What is an idiom? There are many answers for this question Homby (1995) defines an idiom as “a phrase or sentence whose meaning is not clear from the meaning of its individual words and which must be learnt as a whole unit” (as cited in Nguyen, 2010, p.15) Sharing the same point of view, Carter (1987, p.58) states that an idiom is “a restricted collocation which cannot be normally understood from the literal meaning of the words which make it up” Similarly, Seidl and Mordie (1970, p.20) define “an idiom is a number of words which, taken together, mean something different from the individual words of the idiom when they stand alone” This definition will be used as the operational definition in this paper As can be seen from the above definitions, there are different ways to define an idiom In general, most of the linguists share the same point that an idiom is a fixed expression whose meaning cannot be worked out by looking at the meaning of its individual words In other words, an idiom has a non-compositional and non-literal meaning, which means its meaning cannot be deduced from those of its constituents; instead, the meaning can only be inferred as a whole unit For example: A mother says: “My son is always full of beans He just wouldn’t stop running around.” Of course, the mother does not mean that her son is always bringing a lot of beans with him In fact, she is conveying the idea that her son is so active and energetic that he does not want to stay still but run around all the time Idioms and learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL): 3.1 The importance of learning idioms: 3.1.1 Native speaker’s use of idioms: To sound native-like is a demand of every language learner One of the keys to achieving this level is the ability to use and understand idiomatic expressions such as idioms The reason is that idioms are very usually used by native speakers They use these expressions so frequently in everyday situations that they even may not be aware of their figurative nature (Zyzik, 2009) EFL learners, with a view to sounding more natural and less foreign, should turn themselves into being familiar with idioms 3.1.2 Effective communication: Although native speakers use idioms very frequently in both spoken and written English, English learners, as a matter of fact, understand very little, if any, about what are being implied in the idioms used; in addition, they also often use idioms incongruous with the situation This, as a result, leads to several unexpected miscommunications between native and foreign speakers Hence, it can be seen that the capability of understanding correctly the meaning of idioms used counts a great deal in communicating effectively with English native speakers 3.1.3 Subtle meanings and intentions: Having non-literal meanings, idioms are often preferred by native speakers whose purpose of using them is to convey subtle meanings or intentions that literal words cannot precisely express (Brenner, 2003) By learning idioms and how to use them appropriately, learners will be able to bring subtlety into their language and hence better describe their intentions 3.1.4 Conciseness: Another reason why idioms are often used in preference to literal expressions is that idioms express things more concisely since they are composed of fewer words but says more (Brenner, 2003) They convey the meaning more succinctly and accurately than a long literal explanation, allowing speakers to avoid prolixity 3.2 Difficulties in teaching and learning idioms: 3.2.1 Non-literalness/Arbitrariness: That the meaning expected to be understood is significantly different from what the words should literally mean, McPartland (1981) believes, is the main reason why idioms are remarkable obstacles that those who want to obtain a good understanding of idioms have to encounter 3.2.2 Limited exposure to idioms: Ijuro (1986) also attributes the difficulty of idioms to learners’ limited exposure to them On the one hand, native speakers tend to use concrete, simple, everyday vocabulary when they address an EFL speaker, which means idioms are often omitted On the other hand, idioms are frequently used in movies and television However, movies and television not provide learners with interactive situations which enable learners to clarify the meaning and receive feedback on use When watching movies and television, learners’ exposure to idioms occurs mainly in non-interactive situations “where there is no opportunity for negotiation of meaning” (p.237) 3.2.3 Incorrect use: Since idioms vary in formality from slangs and colloquialisms to those which can be used in more formal situations, learners, even though they know the meanings of a certain idiom, still probably cannot apply it in appropriate situations 3.2.4 Lack of appropriate materials: Ijuro (1986) also claims that many language materials either ignore idioms entirely or relegate to the “other expressions” section of vocabulary lists, without providing exercises for learning Rodriguez and Moreno (2009) agree with Ijuro that materials tend to present idiomatic expressions in isolation as if they are “an oddity, as a quirk of language” (p.241) For such reasons, learners have the inclination to skip the section of idioms and tend to focus only on the main content of the material 3.2.5 Lack of learning methods: Rodriguez and Moreno (2009) believes that learners are not provided with necessary and effective tools to learn idiomatic expressions, which leads to the fact that learners “come to think of English idioms as though they were the anomalous creations of a whimsical people.”(p.241) 3.2.6 Unawareness of the importance of idioms: Essential as idioms are, the majority of EFL learners are not aware enough or totally unaware of the importance of such vocabulary items Since learners attach little importance to the learning of idioms and not recognize idioms as the tool to achieving more advanced level of English, they not spend as much time to learn and practice their ability to use idioms as to study other aspects and skills of English like grammar, pronunciation, listening, writing, etc 3.3 Transparency of idioms: Fernando (1996, p.38) defines idioms as “conventionalized multi-word expressions often, but not always, non-literal” Her definition suggests that not all idioms are wholly figurative and that the literal meanings of the individual words making up an idiom can be seen as constituents conferring its idiomatic meaning 3.4 Imageability of idioms: Admittedly, motivation plays a crucial role in determining the transparency of idioms An idiom is motivated in the way that the connection between its global idiomatic meaning and the subsumed meaning of the components can be retrieved by means of the figurative association made accessible by the literal meanings or, in a way, by the images evoked by the words Moreover, motivated idioms are constructed by and hence related to people’s experience and general perception about the world, making it easier for them to derive figurative senses form the concrete elements For that reason, it is logical that in order to acquire better comprehension of an unfamiliar idiom, the process of analyzing the components of idioms based on conceptual metaphors and semantic features and the process of forming a mental image should take place concomitantly Beside the main function of providing effective inferential route to decode the figurative sense of an idiom, the application of imagery also considered as effective mnemonic strategy for long-term retention 3.4.1 Conceptual metaphors: 3.4.1.1 Idioms are metaphorical in nature: Thanks to their metaphorical conceptual system, people seem to possess a certain degree of metaphoric (or figurative) competence, which is the ability to produce and understand abstract concepts in terms of more concrete ones Hence, as one of the main components of figurative language system, idioms tend to be treated as metaphorical constructions having underlying conceptual metaphors conferring their meanings 3.4.1.2 Cultural differences: Since people of different cultures have different sensorimotor interaction and perception about the surrounding physical world in which they are living in, the way they produce and comprehend a metaphoric theme in an imageable idiom thereupon varies among them For that reason, it is especially difficult for language learners to understand what is actually being implied by a certain image grounded on a cultural experience that is not familiar to them In the event when the imageable hints contain conventional images that cannot trigger any implication for meaning retrieval due to cross-cultural Talk through one’s hat Keep something under one’s hat Hang up one’s hat Sail through something Take something on board Laugh up one’s sleeve Have something up one’s sleeve Hang on someone’s sleeve 10 Wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve 11 Have egg on one’s face 12 Cry over spilt milk It should be also emphasized that based on the principles to select idioms to put into test constructed by Steinel et al (2007, p.460), there are criteria that the idioms must meet The first one is that the constituent words of the idioms must be familiar to the participants so that the unknown meanings of individual words will not affect the degree of transparency and hamper the comparability of the idioms In this criterion, the idioms selected above are acceptable since all of their constituent words were believed to be familiar to advanced learners of EFL However, to avoid the worst scenario that some of the words cannot be understood, participants of this study will be asked to read through all of the idioms and say aloud any unfamiliar constituent word Explanation for those words will be provided The second criterion requires the idioms not have one-toone literal equivalents in Vietnamese This should not be a problem as there exist no idioms in Vietnamese that denote similar meanings and simultaneously have exactly the same constituent words as those in English The last criterion is that the idioms have to be unfamiliar to the participants so that the participants’ prior knowledge cannot affect the result of the experiment which is originally designed to test the performance of the participants on unknown idioms However, in their research, Boers and Demecheleer (1999) did not leave out the familiar idioms after their experiment was actually carried 11 out Whichever idiom was indicated by the participants as already known were then left out of the total data during data analysis process Nonetheless, this way of conducting the experiment cannot eliminate the possibility that the participants might know most of the selected idioms If so, after the experiment, there would not be many idioms left to analyze Therefore, the participants in this study will be asked to inform the researcher if they have already known the idioms before the actual experiment started If there are no more than known idioms in total, the experiment will continue In case there are more than 2, substitutes will be at work The substitutive idioms will be retrieved from the study of Steinel et al (2007) Because the idioms selected by Boers and Demecheleer were rated as intermediately transparent by the “blind” judges , in order to ensure the comparability of all idioms and hence the reliability of the experiment, only idioms that were classified as having intermediate transparency in the study of Steinel et al (2007) were chosen to be substitutes 4.3.2 Selection of participants: Not all EFL learners at any level are suitable for learning idioms Idioms are problematic and extremely difficult to learn; therefore, it is required that those who want to study such tricky items of vocabulary have a good command of English There are 22 fourth-year students who are following the Honors Program of the Faculty of English Linguistics and Literatures – University of Social Sciences and Humanities participating in the experiment 4.3.3 Data collection procedure: Inference experiment: The participants will be informed that they are going to receive different sheets of 12 idioms (Apenndix 1, 2) The first one contains only the list of idioms, without any imageable hints to infer their meanings The participants’ job 12 is to try to guess the meanings as they think the idioms will have After that, the second sheets will be distributed In the second sheet, the participants will find the idioms along with their corresponding imageable hints based on which they can derive the idioms’ meanings They will have 15 minutes to complete each sheet When all participants are finished, the researcher will give her feedback including the correct meanings of the idioms Interview: The participants will also be required to answer a few questions regarding how they feel about the new learning strategy and whether or not it facilitates their comprehension 4.3.4 Data analysis procedure: Based on the data analysis procedure of Boers and Demecheleer, the participants’ interpretations of the selected idioms will be classified into categories: No response (The participants cannot infer any interpretation for the idiom) Wrong response (The participants’ interpretation is completely different from the actual idiomatic meaning, e.g “To have egg on one’s face” is interpreted as “To be happy”.) Partially correct response (The participants’ interpretation is more or less relevant to the underlying conceptual metaphors or internal semantics of the component words but not detailed or precise enough, e.g “To cry over spilt milk” is interpreted as “To complain about something”.) Correct response (The participants’ interpretation is to a great extent homogeneous with the actual idiomatic meaning.) The participants’ responses for sheet#1 and sheet#2 will be put in comparison to investigate whether the imageable hints in sheet#2 really help the participants form mental images from which they can infer correct figurative senses of the idioms If the number of partially correct and correct responses for sheet#2 is bigger than that for sheet#1 then the first hypothesis can be confirmed: Learners’ performance on inferring 13 the meanings of idioms with enclosed imageable hints will be better than performance on inferring the meanings of those idioms without enclosed imageable hints 4.4 Pilot experiment: The pilot is conducted with the epurpose of examining whether the imageable hints are structured properly enough to help the participants easily infer the figurative meanings of the idioms It was conducted according to the steps described in Methodology, except that the participants were not in the group that will be tested in the actual experiment Since the real participants will be the whole class of fourth-year students attending the Honors Program of the Faculty, of the third-year Honors Program students who share relatively the same characteristics and level of English were conveniently invited to participate in the pilot However, although the participants can tell what an idiom is, they have not taken the course English Semantics like their seniors did For that reason, before the pilot experiment was carried out, the operational definition of idioms was given to the participants so that they would be aware of the incongruity between form and meaning of idioms  Results: All of the participants indicated that they had never encountered the 12 selected idioms before; therefore, there was no need no replace any idiom in the list The pilot continued with the participants completing the sheets, the results of which are presented in the two tables below: TABLE 1: Rated responses of sheet#1 (without imageable hints) No response Wrong response To pass the hat around Partially correct response To laugh up one’s sleeve 14 Correct response 0 To sail through something To cry over spilt milk 0 To hang on someone’s sleeve To keep something under one’s hat 2 To take something on board 0 To hang up one’s hat 0 To have something up one’s sleeve 0 To have egg on one’s face 1 To wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve To talk through one’s hat 0 10 37 Total responses Average 47 13 78.3% 21.7% From Table 1, it is obvious that without imageable hints, the participants struggled to identify the figurative meanings of the idioms They either failed to produce a response or derived wrong idiomatic meanings as the majority of the responses (78.3%) are rated as no response or wrong response, whereas only over one fifth of the responses (21.7%) are partially correct or correct TABLE 2: Rated responses of sheet#2 (with imageable hints) To pass the hat around No response Wrong response 0 15 Partially correct response Correct response To laugh up one’s sleeve 2 To sail through something 2 To cry over spilt milk To hang on someone’s sleeve 0 To keep something under one’s hat 0 To take something on board To hang up one’s hat 0 To have something up one’s sleeve To have egg on one’s face 2 To wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve To talk through one’s hat 2 18 17 25 Total responses Average 18 42 30% 70% Table shows that the participants were more likely to successfully infer the meanings of the idioms with the assistance of imageable hints as 70% of the total responses are partially correct or correct, which outnumbers 30% of no response and wrong responses The statistics confirms the hypothesis that learners’ performance on inferring the meanings of idioms with enclosed imageable hints is better than their performance on inferring the meanings of those idioms without enclosed imageable hints Generally, the data also suggest that most of the imageable hints are constructed appropriately enough to lead the participants to correct deduction of idioms’ figurative meanings However, there are three cases that need to be revised: “to cry over spilt milk”, “to have something up one’s sleeve” and “to have egg on one’s face” 16 In the case of “to cry over spilt milk”, table indicates that the imageable hint helped one participant to infer the correct meaning of the idiom compared to none in table 1; however, the other four came up with incorrect ones The hint is about a hungry boy who is crying because he accidentally drops the last bottle of milk, making the milk spill all over the floor Perhaps the hint is not clear enough and somehow misleading because it made one participant think that the idiom had the meaning of “to have nothing to eat”, one “to give up on something” and the other two “to regret doing something” In order for the actual participants to arrive at correct meaning of this idiom in the real experiment, the imageable hint should be changed in the way that does not involve having nothing to eat or being regretful As for “to have something up one’s sleeve”, although the performance of the participants is better with the imageable hint as two got partially correct responses compared to none without the imageable hint, the result is not so much convincing because the other three still could not infer the correct figurative meaning These participants seemed to misunderstand the possessive form “one’s”, maybe they thought that it was “someone’s” because they assumed that this idiom had the meaning of “to discover someone’s secret” However, this is mainly attributed to the weakness of the hint as it made them think that someone finds out someone else’s secret In preparation for the actual experiment, the hint should be adjusted to lead the participants to the correct meaning The hint for “to have egg on one’s face” is also in need of adjustment Unlike the other two idioms, the results for this idiom with and without imageable hint are the same (1 partially correct response and correct responses), meaning that the hint for inference is not as effective as it is expected Obviously the image of someone throwing eggs on someone else’s face in combination with the participants’ misunderstanding, again, of the meaning of the possessive form “one’s” made them think that this idiom meant “to make fun of someone” and “to something bad to someone” Therefore, the imageable hint 17 should be modified so that the number of correct responses is increased in the actual experiment The pilot experiment signifies that the imageable hints have facilitating effect that enhances the participants’ comprehension of idioms and that most of the hints are constructed properly enough to help increase the possibility that the participants infer correctly the meanings of the selected idiom However, changes should be made to some of the hints to ensure that the number of partially correct and correct responses is bigger than that of wrong responses or even no response at all Conclusion: In a nutshell, from the result of the pilot study, it might be concluded that imageablity has positive effects on EFL learners’ comprehension and possibly long-term retention of English idioms It also suggests that many idioms, in contrast to traditional belief, need not be tackled as notoriously arbitrary items in language learning Deliberately taking idioms literally can be a considerably useful technique to come up with a vivid image conducive to relevant interpretations of the meanings of idioms This method of using imageable hints can be a fruitful remedy for the comprehension problems learners often encounter through the course of learning English idioms On the basis of conceptual metaphors and semantics of idioms’ constituents, teachers can easily construct appropriate imageble hints that can assist learners during their inference process while learners can be exhilarated and encouraged to try to decode the idioms’ meanings When applied successfully, the proposed technique can remove the long-lasting burden of teaching and learning idioms, allowing both teachers and learners to enjoy the “colorful spectrum of imageable idioms” (Boers & Demecheleer, 1999, p.261) 18 Appendices Appendix 1: SHEET 1 To pass the hat around T o laugh up one’s sleeve T o sail through something T o cry over spilt milk T o hang on one’s sleeve T o keep something under one’s hat T o take something on board T o hang up one’s hat T o have something up one’s sleeve 19 10 T o have egg on one’s face 11 T o wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve 12 T o talk through one’s hat Appendix 2: SHEET To pass the hat around (Visualize a street musician After finishing his awesome act, he passes the hat around the audience.) T o laugh up one’s sleeve (Visualize a man watching his colleague presenting her idea to the board of directors He thinks that her idea is so stupid and he uses his shirt’s sleeve to cover his mouth which is laughing.) T o sail through something (Visualize a ship that sails all the way from Vietnam to South Africa very fast, let say, in just about day.) T o cry over spilt milk (Visualize a little boy holding a bottle of milk in his hand Unfortunately, he drops the bottle and the milk spills all over the floor He cries so hard, but there is nothing else he can about it.) T o hang on one’s sleeve (Visualize a child who is trying to hang on his mother’s sleeve all the time and whenever she goes.) 20 T o keep something under one’s hat (Visualize a suspicious man walking on the street Under his hat there’s a lot of money.) T o take something on board (Visualize a ship name “My mind” at a harbor On the board of that ship there are a lot of cargoes, written on which are the words “my friend’s idea”, “my mom’s opinion”, etc The sailors of the ship are taking on board more cargoes like these from other people.) T o hang up one’s hat (Visualize a secret FBI agent who always wears a hat He is super old now, so he hangs up his hat and leaves the headquarters.) T o have something up one’s sleeve (Visualize a magician who is trying to make a bird appear out of nowhere Hidden in his shirt's sleeve is a bird waiting to be shown.) 10 T o have egg on one’s face (Visualize a comedian on stage He is acting but the audience is not laughing Suddenly his face is covered with yolk after eggs are thrown at him Now everybody is laughing at him.) 11 T o wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve (Visualize a shy boy who takes his heart our and wear it on his shirt’s sleeve so that the girl who he secretly loves can know his feeling for her.) (Don’t worry, it’s just imagination, he still lives ^^) 12 T o talk through one’s hat (Visualize a politician who is giving a speech to the public He keeps talking through his hat All you see coming from his mouth are the words “LIE”, “LIE”, “LIE”, but after going though his hat they come out as “TRUTH”, “TRUTH”, “TRUTH”.) 21 22 References Andreou, G., & Galantomos, I (2008) Teaching idioms in a foreign context: preliminary comments on factors determining Greek instruction Metaphorik.de, 15, 7-23 Boers, F., & Demecheleer, M (1999) Measuring the impact of cross-cultural differences on learners’ comprehension of imageable idioms ELT Journal, 55(3), 256-262 Boers, F (2000) Metaphor awareness and vocabulary retention Applied Linguistics, 21, 553-571 Brenner, G (2003) Webster’s New World: American Idioms Handbook (1st ed.) 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