On the effectiveness of lexical inferencing strategies instruction on L2 idioms production

This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of four different forms of strategy instruction on idioms production. To this end, 120 female intermediate-level students were randomly assigned to five treatments conditions. The four experimental groups were taught four lexical inferencing strategies including form-focused, meaning-focused, monitoring, and evaluating strategies, and the control group received no instruction. At the end of this experimental period, an idiom production posttest was administered. A one-way ANOVA procedure was used to analyze the obtained data. The results showed that the form-focused group performed significantly better than the evaluating and meaning-focused groups. Moreover, the comparison group performed slightly better than one of the experimental groups (monitoring group). The findings suggested that form-focused strategy can be used as an effective instructional tool to help learners enhance their lexical inferencing ability. These findings may have theoretical and pedagogical implications for language learning.