Abstract:

This study aims to compare the effectiveness of definition + etymological notes versus definition + pictorial support on the learning of English idioms through reading online texts with hyperlinks to definitions. 121 Turkish learners of English as a foreign language assigned to two different courses were given a vocabulary knowledge scale, revealing that the idioms were unfamiliar to the learners. Participants in both groups read 17 passages with definitions as hyperlink annotations for 18 idioms in a scorm package built via an authoring tool. In addition to the definitions of idioms in both groups, the visuals were given above the text in the first experimental group, while the etymological notes were provided as hyperlink annotation in the second. A comparison of the groups’ post-test scores  using Mann Whitney U test indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the groups’ median scores, (U= 1786.000, p = .819). 

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