Teach EFL idioms through humorous video clips with contextual guessing and collaborative sentence production¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 1 study (1 causal), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article recommends that EFL teachers provide students with humorous video clips for idiom instruction, and that material developers and curriculum designers "enrich their EFL idiom textbooks accompanied by CDs containing humorous idiom video clips." The tested procedure showed each clip twice, had learners infer meanings from context, allowed requests for clarification, and asked learners to use idioms in new sentences in collaboration with classmates.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Learners need opportunities to guess and infer idiom meanings from the context the clip provides, plus clarification and examples when necessary.

Constraints¶

• Generalizing results to EFL/ESL situations outside the Iranian context should only be done with great caution, per the authors.

Target Learners¶

• Undergraduate EFL learners in Iranian state universities

Target Learning Goals¶

• English idiom achievement and positive attitudes toward idiom learning

Claims¶

• Humorous video clips improve Iranian undergraduate EFL learners' idiom achievement compared with conventional instruction without clips [+W]
• Iranian undergraduate EFL learners taught idioms with humorous video clips hold positive attitudes toward their classroom use [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Teach idioms through interactive, contextualized activities such as role-play and movie clips rather than isolated definitions

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Malihe Neissari, Hamid Ashraf & Mohammad Reza Ghorbani. (2017). Humorous Videos and Idiom Achievement: Some Pedagogical Considerations for EFL Learners. Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research, 5(3), 109-127. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1156181