The comparative effect of storytelling and text reconstruction on Iranian learners' comprehension of Idiomatic expressions

Document Type : research article

Authors

1 English Teaching Department, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran

2 English Translation Department, Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the comparative effect of storytelling and text reconstruction comprehension of Idiomatic expressions. To this end, 90 Iranian intermediate participants were selected on the basis of their scores on Oxford Placement Test and were assigned into three experimental groups of text reconstruction, storytelling and control groups. The most frequency search idiomatic expression on electronic search engines were selected to be included in the teaching lesson plans. Pretest/posttest design was used to collect data on participants' comprehension of idiomatic expressions. The results of one way ANOVA and post hoc comparisons indicated that there is a significant difference in the performance of all experimental groups from pretest to posttests confirming the outperformance of both experimental groups in comparison with text control group. Results also indicated that storytelling group outperformed the text reconstruction group. The implications and suggestions for further study were discussed in the light of limitations of the study.

Keywords


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