A Comparative Study Of The Effects Of Pictures And Etymological Notes On English Idiom Acquisition

Idioms are essential to English learners, the master of which is usually considered tobe the mark of advanced English proifciency. Idiom studies have been always a focal pointof second language acquisition. However, it is undeniable that idioms constitute one of themost diiffcult areas of second language acquisition for both teachers and learners. How tomaster idioms? And which is the best way to learn them, rote memorizing or repeatedpractice, or some other ways? In order to tackle those problems, researchers have madetremendous efforts in idiom acquisition. In1971，Paivio put forward Dual Coding Theory(DCT)，which provides idiom studies and idiom acquisition with new sights and newmethods. According to Dual Coding Theory, all cognitive processes consist of two distinctsubsystems, a verbal system specialized for dealing directly with language and thenonverbal system specialized for dealing with nonlinguistic objects and events, such asimagery. The two systems are both interconnected and activated differently, which helpslearners acquire idioms. Based on this theory, many researchers such as Boers, RenataSzczepaniak and Robert Lew have made huge efforts to ifnd out the effects of imagery inthe form of pictures and etymologies on idiom acquisition. Their researches furtherconifrmed the positive effects of Dual Coding Theory.The present study is carried out based on those researches. It aims to compare theeffects of different forms of imagery, that is pictures and etymological notes, and ifnd outthe differences between the effects of students’ proifciency on idiom acquisition throughthe two forms. In order to achieve those purposes，the present study mainly adopts aquantitative approach in the form of experiment, where12idioms are involved and fourgroups of different reading materials are used:1. deifnition of idiomatic meaning+example sentence (Deiffx);2. deifnition of idiomatic meaning+example+etymologicalnote (DefExEtym);3. deifnition of idiomatic meaning+example+picture (DefExPic);4.deifnition of idiomatic meaning+example+picture+etymological note (DefExPicEtym).Besides，there are73ifrst-year English majors and73second-year English majors who participate this experiment. Every73subjects are divided into four groups according to thefour reading materials. In the experiment, every subject is asked to fulifll a piece ofmultiple choice paper. And the statistics are collected after two posttests and analyzedthrough SPSS. The results of the experiment are discussed from two aspects, namely, theaspect of Dual Coding Theory and the aspect of those studies that have been done before.The major ifndings of the study are summarized as follows:First, different imagery elements have different effects on the retention of idiomaticform and meaning. Pictures have positive effects on the retention of both meanings andforms of idioms，which is consistent with the hypothesis of DCT. That is，nonverbal codescan attract learners’ attention more easily than verbal codes. Unfortunately, the presentstudy shows no signiifcant effect of etymological notes on idiomatic acquisition, for themere presence of etymological notes in idioms cannot guarantee deep processing of theircontent and thus cannot ensure better retention of idioms. Second，different Englishproifciencies have little influence on idiom retention through the inclusion of imagery inidioms.Although there are some limitations in this study, the ifndings are of great pedagogicalimportance. They not only shed light on the teaching and learning of idioms，but on thedesigning of textbooks and the compiling of idiom dictionaries.