A Study Of Paired-associate Learning Of L2 Idioms

Since the concept of"paired-associate learning (PAL)"was coined, studies of PAL in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) have received frequent attention. PAL, as a memory strategy, simply means learning to respond with one member of a pair (pair of words, numbers or syllables, etc.) when given the other member of the pair. It has been widely used in many fields, such as psychology, medical science, language learning, etc. The main focus of the related studies in SLA field is on PAL of individual words, but few studies have been conducted on the multiword units like idioms in PAL context. Idiom figurativeness is also regarded as an internal factor affecting PAL of L2 idioms, while little work has been conducted to uncover the effects of figurativeness on PAL of L2 idiom. The related studies mostly design an immediate post test, so further evidence about long-term retention is needed.The present study, based on Steinel et al.'s study (2007), tries to make an exploration on the relationship between the L2 idiom learning conditions (productive or receptive) and the testing formats (productive or receptive) on both immediate and delayed post tests. In the meantime, the effects of internal factor――figurativeness of the L2 idioms――are also considered. The following two questions are addressed in this study:1. What is the relationship between the L2 idiom learning conditions (productive or receptive) and the testing formats (productive or receptive)?2. How does the internal factor in terms of figurativeness affect learners'understanding and learning of L2 idioms?88 freshmen from one institute in Jiangsu Province were involved in this study. The quantitative data were resorted to Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 13.0, and the qualitative analysis of data from the questionnaire was supposed to support and explain the quantitative results drawn from the quantitative data. The major findings can be summarized as follows:1. When the idiom learning condition is in accordance with the condition of idiom testing, learners'performance on the immediate productive test is significantly better. However, on the immediate receptive test, participants who learn receptively don't perform considerably better than those who learn productively. The relationship between learning condition and testing condition is not significantly obvious on both productive and receptive delayed post tests. In addition, more difficult learning condition does not promote retention.2. The L2 idiom figurativeness facilitates idiom learning on both productive and receptive immediate post tests, and the effect is stronger on the receptive immediate post test. When it comes to the learning condition, the figurativeness does not facilitate performance in the receptive learning condition. However, it promotes performance in the productive learning condition.In view of the findings, some pedagogical implications are discussed, followed by some limitations and suggestions for future study. The present study sheds some light on English learning and teaching, and EFL research as well.