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Abstract
Studies have shown that informing language learners about the literal underpinning of idioms can help them to remember these expressions. It has also been suggested that prompting learners to guess the meaning of lexical items may be beneficial because it can pique their curiosity and promote cognitive engagement. In the case of idioms, the literal underpinnings can be used as hints to improve the chances of successful inferencing. Even so, some inaccurate inferencing remains inevitable. Hence, the question must be asked if wrong initial interpretations of idioms might interfere with later recall of their meanings. In this study, EFL learners (N = 25) were asked to guess the meaning of idioms first without and then with information about their literal underpinnings, after which the actual meanings were given. One week later, the learners were asked to recall the meanings of the idioms. Accurate recall was found more likely when guessing had been successful than when guesses had needed to be rectified. Moreover, almost half of the inaccurate responses closely resembled wrong guesses the participants had proffered the previous week, suggesting that giving learners the correct meaning after an inaccurate guess does not always replace the latter in memory.
ABSTRACT IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE (i.e., MANDARIN CHINESE)
以往研究表明, 告知学习者习语的词源本义可以帮助他们记忆习语在实际使用中的语义。 此外, 促使学习者猜测习语中词项成分的意思也是有益的, 因为这可以激发他们的求知欲并促进其认知参与度。 在习语学习中, 词源本义可以用作提示信息以提高词义推断的成功率。 尽管如此, 推断错误有时不可避免。 那么, 前期词义推断中出现的错误理解是否会干扰学习者此后对正确词义的记忆呢？ 在本研究中, 25名外语学习者分别先后在无词源本义提示和有提示的情况下对习语的语义进行了猜测和推断, 随后收到正确的实际语义进行学习。 一周后, 对学习者进行习语语义回忆测试。 结果发现, 相比于需要修正推断的情况, 准确的词义记忆更有可能在前期词义推断正确的情况下出现。 而且, 测试中大约有一半的不准确的语义记忆与一周前的错误理解非常相似, 这表明在不准确的推断发生后, 提供正确的释义并不总能帮助学习者替换掉其有错误的语义记忆。
PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY
Idioms are expressions such as in a tight corner whose meaning does not follow directly from adding up the meanings of their constituent words. Studies have shown that informing language learners about the literal underpinning of figurative idioms (for example, that the idiom pass the baton is derived from relay racing where athletes pass a small stick—a baton—to their team members who will be running the next part of the race) can help them to remember their meaning. In addition, it has been suggested that prompting learners to try and guess the meaning of idioms is beneficial for retention, and that the literal underpinnings could be used as hints. To find out how helpful such hints are, Chinese learners of English were asked in this study to guess the meaning of various English idioms first without and then with information about their literal underpinnings, after which the actual idiomatic meaning was clarified to them. One week later, the students were presented with the same expressions and asked to recall their meanings. Accurate recall of the idiomatic meanings after a week was found far more likely when inferencing had been successful than in the case of failed guesses. Almost half of the inaccurate recall responses closely resembled the wrong guesses that the learners had proffered the previous week, indicating that wrong guesses can linger in memory despite the corrective feedback received on the guesses. This suggests that there is a downside to instructional procedures that prompt learners to guess the meanings of lexical items.
Keywords:
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the 25 students who volunteered to participate in this study, to Lisa Woods and Rolando Coto Solando for their advice on inferential statistics, and to Mark Toomer and Brian Strong for the many hours they invested in assessing and discussing the participants’ meaning guesses and post-test responses. We would like to extend our gratitude to the reviewers of earlier versions of this article for their helpful comments and suggestions.
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 In cognitive psychology, a distinction is sometimes made between guessing and predicting (Brod, Citation2021)—akin to the distinction in lay terms between ‘blind/wild’ and ‘educated’ guesses. In this article, we use the term guessing in a broad sense, although the task given to the participants (i.e. inferring idiomatic meanings aided by familiar lexical constituents and literal-underpinning hints) amounts to what some scholars in cognitive psychology would consider ‘predicting’.
2 The Test for English Majors (TEM) is administered nationwide in China by the National Advisory Commission on Foreign Language Teaching in Higher Education. It has two levels—Band 4 and Band 8. English majors take the TEM-4 at the end of second year and the TEM-8 near the end of their fourth (senior) year in the university. According to the TEM descriptors, a score of 60–69 qualifies as a pass grade, one of 70–79 is considered a good grade, and one of 80 or above is an excellent grade. The participants’ mean score on this test was 75.72 (SD = 6.52), with the scores ranging from 61 to 89 in a normal distribution.
3 It later transpired that three of the selected idioms (a hot potato, a dark horse, and to tighten your belt) did have direct counterparts in Mandarin Chinese—although this by no means implies that all the participants were familiar with these Chinese expressions. After all, L1 users cannot be expected to know the entire lexicon of their language, and this holds true also for its stock of figurative expressions (e.g. Boers & Muñoz-Basols, Citation2021). Unsurprisingly, the participants who were familiar with the Chinese counterparts found the above English idioms easy to guess already before receiving the literal-underpinning hint.
4 For idioms where we found more than one proposed origin, we chose the one that seemed the most plausible.
5 It needs to be mentioned that the students were also asked, at the end of the first interview, to rate on a six-point scale how transparent they found the connection to be between the literal underpinning and the figurative meaning of each idiom. This was done because we wanted to see if it was especially idioms where this connection was judged to be quite transparent that stood a good chance of being remembered. We found a moderate positive association between transparency ratings and meaning recall, but this finding has been reported elsewhere (Wang et al., Citation2020). It is nonetheless worth mentioning the transparency-rating task since it entails additional engagement with the idioms, likely to benefit later recall.
6 The present study focuses on the meaning of lexical phrases. There is additional evidence that inviting students to guess the lexical composition (i.e. the ‘form’) of phrases can cause interference from wrong guesses when the students are later asked to recall them (e.g. Strong & Boers, Citation2019).