Effects of Three Types of FoF on the Use of Idioms in Controlled and Free Spoken Response Tasks

This paper reports on the effects of three types of focus on form (FoF) instruction, namely explicit, implicit and combinatorial, on acquisition of idioms by EFL intermediate learners. 80 learners who were homogenous in terms of language proficiency and idiomatic knowledge were assigned to four groups: three experimental and one control. One of the experimental groups was exposed to explicit teaching of idioms. The second experimental group was taught the same idiomatic expressions through implicit FoF and the third experimental group (referred to as the combinatorial FoF group in this study) was taught the idioms through a combination of explicit and implicit techniques. The ability to use the target idiomatic expressions was measured through a multiple choice test (MCT) and a free spoken response task (FSRT). On both measures, the combinatorial FoF group outperformed the other groups followed by the group taught through explicit FoF which was in turn followed by the one taught through implicit FoF. In addition, the differences between all the groups were found to be statistically significant on both measures. The interpretation of the results along with the implications is discussed.