How do idioms affect our language

As Cooper points out, comprehending, as well as producing, idioms presents language learners with particular vocabulary learning problems as they are figurative expressions that do not mean what the individual words literally state and they are so frequently encountered in both spoken and written discourse.

Cooper contends that idioms belong to the category of non-literal or figurative language that also contains metaphors, similes, and proverbs. He claims that these forms of language are not easy to understand and to learn since they do not mean what they literally state. Of the four kinds of non-literal expressions, idioms are the most frequently encountered in discourse. Native speakers undoubtedly use numerous idioms during the course of each day.

Since idioms are figurative expressions that do not mean what they literally state and since they are so frequent in spoken and written discourse, understanding and producing idioms cause a vocabulary learning problem for L2 learners Cooper, It is evident that teaching idiomatic expressions deserves an important place in developing a higher proficiency level for language learners.

Wray suggests that mastering idioms is required for successful language learning and native-like command of language. However, the idioms of the English language are often skipped over by EFL teachers in an attempt to simplify things for their students. In other words, according to Lazar , figurative expressions i.

The fact is that few native English speakers use Standard English; they frequently use words and phrases that make little sense when the literal definition is used. Moreover, Mola mentions that the emphasis on mastery of grammar allows little time for the other aspects of language competence, such as the ability to understand idiomatic phrases.

Thus, as idioms are commonly encountered in daily speech, the teaching of idioms should begin to draw much more attention. The use of a proper approach or method in language teaching has always been a matter of concern among language learners and teachers.

The present study aims at finding a suitable method for teaching idiomatic expressions. Many of the previous studies have investigated the effects of context on the idiom comprehension process, i. Results of such experiments showed that when idiomatic expressions are encountered in a context, participants perform better. Saragi et al. Many of these studies concentrated on examining the effectiveness of contextual learning. All these studies emphasize strongly the preference of vocabulary acquisition in context.

Thus, until now the previous research has studied the differences between the use of context and non-context in teaching idioms. However, the researcher in the present study also presents the idioms in a limited context i. One of the prime questions concerning the acquisition of idiomatic expressions or vocabulary acquisition in general is finding the most efficient way of helping learners with their long-term learning.

According to Mondria and Wit-De Boer , the best way of learning words is with the aid of context. Thus out of context, they cannot perform perfectly in the long term. In other words, the meanings of words that are learned from context have a clearly positive effect on retention. It compares three types of idiom teaching. The researcher intends to investigate the differences between context and non-context on the one hand and the differences between context types extended versus limited on the other hand.

Group 1 the extended-context group received idiom instruction through context, Group 2 the limited-context group received idiom instruction through sentences and had no opportunity to learn idiomatic expressions through extended context, and Group 3 the control group had no opportunity to learn idiomatic expressions through any context and, thus, were exposed to the same idioms only in a decontextualized form simply through definitions.

The study aimed to answer the following research questions:. Do the participants in the extended-context group Group 1 perform better than the participants in the limited-context group Group 2 on the immediate posttest? Do the participants in the extended-context group Group 1 perform better than the participants in the control group Group 3 on the immediate posttest?

Do the participants in the extended-context group Group 1 perform better than the participants in the limited-context group Group 2 on the delayed posttest? Do the participants in the extended-context group Group 1 perform better than the participants in the control group Group 3 on the delayed posttest? Three classes of 20 upper-intermediate Iranian EFL learners both males and females with an average age of 15 participated in this study.

Two classes were randomly assigned as the experimental groups Groups 1 and 2 and one as the control group Group 3. There were sixty participants altogether. Group 1 experimental group, the extended-context group was taught idioms through context, specifically brief stories, and Group 2 experimental group, the limited-context group was exposed to individual sentences which illustrated the use of the idiomatic expressions.

Finally, Group 3 control group, the decontextualized group received the same idioms in only a decontextualized form through definitions. None of the three groups had been exposed to any specific previous instructional emphasis on teaching idioms in an organized way. The three groups were considered to be equal in terms of English language proficiency and knowledge of idioms.

It should also be mentioned that the participants in all three groups were taking regular English classes using the Topnotch series. The idiom work was done at the end of each class period for approximately10 to 15 minutes.

During each of the four sessions, ten idioms were presented to the participants in each group. Context-based instruction was employed with Group 1 see Appendix B.

The same idioms were applied in individual sentences to the limited-context group, namely Group 2 see Appendix C. Finally, the participants in Group 3 were simply given the same idioms with definitions see Appendix D. Needless to say, since not all definitions and examples offered on the above website were clear enough, the researcher extracted related examples and definitions from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English In order to practice the target idioms, the same written follow-up activity was administered to all groups see Appendix E.

At the end of each session, the participants were given ten gapped sentences to fill in the blanks with an appropriate idiom. In order to examine the effect of the three instructional treatments on learning idioms in an EFL context, a multiple choice item test was developed by the researcher see Appendix F.

It was administered immediately after the instructional session was completed on Day 4. They were given this posttest two weeks after the instructional period ended.

In developing the posttests, fifty items were first prepared and then randomly assigned to either of the two administrations. Both tests were prepared by the researcher. The initial data were collected during a 4-session period.

The participants in Group 3 control group were exposed to the idioms through definitions only, without any context. In Groups 2 and 3 experimental groups , however, the idioms were embedded in context: some brief stories and individual sentences, respectively. They worked with the target idioms during every single session.

In order not to deviate from the specified treatment, the instructor, the researcher of the present study, did not provide further explanation for the participants. In many cases, the participants were asked to seek peer feedback when it came to figuring out the definitions of idioms from the context or later when they were doing the gap-fill exercise. They were provided with the correct answers immediately after they finished the task.

The entire process was repeated during four instructional sessions. After being exposed to the whole forty target idioms, the immediate posttest was administered to all the participants in order to see whether the various kinds of instructions had any effect on the process of learning the L2 idioms. The immediate posttest consisted of 25 multiple choice items covering 25 idioms of the entire The next day, the participants were informed of their scores.

However, there was no additional feedback provided on the immediate posttest in order not to deviate from the intended treatment. Additionally, the participants were given the delayed posttest two weeks after the entire instructional period was over to find out the long term effects of the different instructional treatments on learning the idioms.

Both immediate and delayed posttests were equal in format but not in content 25 multiple-choice items. Go figure! Grammarly can save you from misspellings, grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and other writing issues on all your favorite websites.

It conveys your message well and makes it more interesting for your readers. Idioms can also add humor to your writing in places where you may otherwise seem brash. There are quite a few idioms that can take dull writing and make it more impressive, which used in the right context will serve writers well. Too many idioms can be a distraction. Also, be sure that you know the correct meaning of the idiom before you use it in your writing.

In compositional phrases, idiom constituents constrain both idiom interpretation and use. For instance, the verb kick implies a discrete, swift action making it impossible to say he kicked the bucket all week , while one could say he lay dying all week Glucksberg, However, despite the better understanding of idiom behaviour, there is no doubt that idiomatic expressions share some characteristics that distinguish them from other multi-word phrases.

One is that although idioms may be decomposable, their overall meaning is often not immediately obvious from the meaning of their constituent elements. The other concerns the restrictions that they are subjected to in terms of lexical choices and syntactic properties such as aspect, mood or voice Moon, While these properties affect idiom processing in both the first and the second language, there are significant differences in the cognitive load they place on native and non-native speakers.

In L1, idioms are typically acquired through exposure. Furthermore, experimental research has shown that native speakers have a strong intuition about idiom compositionality. However, for second language learners, idioms remain a source of perplexity. One problem is that learners are not always aware of the figurative usage of the phrases. Second, even if they recognize the figurative use of expressions, due to their limited linguistic proficiency and vocabulary size, learners often lack the knowledge and the skills to disambiguate the phrase meaning in the way that native speakers may do.

Due to the limitations of their vocabulary knowledge in terms of both size and quality, it is more difficult for language learners to interpret figurative phrases by stretching the literal meanings of the individual words, a strategy that Grant and Bauer argue is sufficient for decoding the meaning of a large number of figurative idioms. Limited vocabulary knowledge also prevents them from recognizing the constraining effect that individual words may have on the syntactic behaviour of the phrases as a whole.

Many idioms are also culturally embedded. Moreover, even if learners succeed in inferring an idiom meaning correctly, it is unlikely that the phrase will be immediately retained for subsequent use. As Lindstomberg and Boers point out, learning multi-word chunks is generally a slow process, which requires multiple encounters with the target expressions.

Considering the limited contact with the target language that most learners have, only the highest frequency idioms are likely to be taken up incidentally. Incidental uptake is also likely to be difficult due to the fact that in natural communication people tend to focus on the meaning rather than on the linguistic form. Therefore, if idiom meaning is inferred correctly, and there is no communication breakdown, it is unlikely that the learners will pay attention to the exact wording of the phrase, which is crucial for correct idiom usage.

The pervasiveness of idiomatic expressions in the natural language, the intrinsic difficulties that figurative language entails, insufficient exposure, and the limited lexical proficiency of second language learners, their lack of knowledge of cultural and historical contexts, and their general bias towards literal interpretation, are all strong arguments in favour of the explicit teaching of idiomatic language. This assumption is also reflected in teaching materials.

As far back as , Irujo observed that idioms were either entirely omitted from English textbooks or, if included, were just listed in vocabulary sections of the textbook chapters, without any activities that could help learners remember their meaning or master their usage a. Regrettably, thirty years later, little has changed. Many textbooks simply do not include any idiomatic expressions, and those that do, do not present them in any systematic way. Even reference books on vocabulary teaching do not seem to give sufficient attention to idiomatic language.

For instance, in Vocabulary in Language Teaching Schmitt, only about half a page is devoted to idioms, and the highly popular Teaching and Learning Vocabulary by Paul Nation does not include any idiom teaching activities. Considering all the aforementioned challenges that idiom learning entails, it seems highly unlikely that L2 learners will be able to master idiomatic language by themselves.

To begin with, learners are not always aware of the figurative usage of the phrases. Furthermore, even if they recognize the figurative use of expressions, due to their limited linguistic proficiency and vocabulary size, second language learners often lack the skills to take advantage of contextual clues to disambiguate the phrase meaning in the way that the native speakers may do.

Second, even if learners succeed in inferring an idiom meaning correctly, it is unlikely that the phrase will be immediately retained for subsequent use.

Another problem is that in natural communication, people tend to focus on the meaning rather than on the linguistic form. Therefore, if idiom meaning is inferred correctly, and there is no communication breakdown, it is unlikely that the learners will pay attention to the exact wording of the phrases, which is crucial for correct idiom usage. The need for the explicit teaching of idioms also arises from the specific lexico-grammatical properties of these expressions.

One is that their overall meaning is often not immediately obvious from the meaning of their constituent elements. The other is the restrictions that they are subjected to in terms of the lexical choices and syntactic properties such as aspect, mood or voice Moon, First, native speakers and language learners differ in their perceptions of idiom compositionality.

Experimental research has shown that native speakers have a strong intuition about idiom compositionality. On the other hand, due to their limited vocabulary knowledge, learners often fail to recognize the constraining effect that individual words may have on the syntactic behaviour of the phrases as a whole.

Learners are also at a disadvantage when it comes to the perception of the semantic transparency of idiomatic phrases. Some idioms are both compositional and semantically transparent. For example, in the idiom break the ice , it is easy to see how break corresponds to swift changing and how ice denotes uncomfortable social situation. Other idioms may be compositional but semantically opaque. For example, in the idiom spill the beans , it possible to map the individual words to the components of the idiom meaning, with spilling denoting unintentional revealing and beans standing for secret information.

The origin of this idiom can be traced back to voting practices in ancient Greece. When there was a secret vote, white beans were placed in a jar to express support, and black ones to express opposition.

Therefore, spilling the beans meant disclosing a secret. While some idioms may be semantically opaque even to native speakers, for language learners the difficulties are more complex. First, due to the limitations of their vocabulary knowledge in terms of both size and quality, it is more difficult for language learners to interpret figurative phrases by stretching the literal meanings of the individual words, the strategy that Grant and Bauer argue is sufficient for decoding the meaning of a large number of figurative idioms.

Second, many idioms are culturally embedded. In summary, the pervasiveness of idiomatic expressions in the natural language, the intrinsic difficulties that figurative language entails, insufficient exposure, the limited lexical proficiency of second language learners, their lack of knowledge of cultural and historical contexts, and their general bias towards literal interpretation are all strong arguments in favour of the explicit teaching of idiomatic language.

Therefore, this paper will examine some theoretical and pedagogical issues relevant to the design and implementation of explicit idiom instruction in the L2 classroom. To some extent, the acquisition of idiomatic language is governed by the same cognitive processes that control other linguistic behaviour, and learning in general. General principles of long-term memory formation such as noticing, encoding, storage and retrieval underlie the learning of multi-word figurative expressions, just like they underlie the learning of the literal meanings of individual words cf.

In his influential paper on the role of consciousness in second language learning, Schmidt argues that noticing is one of the prerequisites for long-term information retention. Subliminal perception may be possible, but subliminal learning is not. Memory requires attention and awareness, and for input to become an intake, learners first must notice the linguistic features in the text.

As discussed earlier, learners tend to be biased towards the literal processing of idiomatic phrases cf. Cieslicka, Their lack of expectations regarding the figurative usage can hinder noticing, and consequently impede the acquisition of the phrases. Therefore, it is important that teachers offer instruction that will have a priming effect and promote the noticing of idioms in the input. To begin with, the input should offer multiple encounters with the target phrase.

Frequent exposure to target words is known to promote their saliency Nation, ; Schmidt, ; Sharwood Smith, Therefore, enhanced input with multiple occurrences of the target idiom is expected to facilitate the perceptibility of figurative language. Another issue of concern is the development of the appropriate learning tasks. This may be done, for example, by placing an idiom in a question, or by asking a question that requires the correct interpretation of metaphoric meaning.

Once the idioms have been noticed in the input, they need to be encoded into the memory system for storage and later retrieval. Encoding can be facilitated in a number of ways. In their seminal work Metaphors We Live By , Lakoff and Johnson claim that many idiomatic expressions are linguistic realisations of conceptual metaphors.

In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor denotes a figurative comparison in which one idea or conceptual domain is understood in terms of another. According to Lakoff and Johnson, conceptual metaphors underlie our thought and perception and shape our language. Numerous examples are offered as evidence for the metaphorical nature of the human conceptual system and the semantic motivation of idiomatic expressions. Many conceptual metaphors are grounded in human experience, and the regularity with which they reoccur in different languages has led some scientists to hypothesize that the mapping between conceptual domains may be a reflection of neural mappings in the brain cf.

The conceptual metaphor theory has brought about a major change in the understanding of figurative language. It has become clear that lexical choices in many idiomatic expressions are semantically motivated rather than arbitrary. A better understanding of the semantic motivation of figurative language has opened new opportunities for more cognitively sound practices in the teaching of idioms to second language learners. The conceptual metaphor framework has also made it possible to organize idiomatic language and present it to the learners in a systematic way.

Memory studies have shown that retention is improved if links between individual items can be established, and new information can be related to previously acquired knowledge cf.

Baddeley, This means that introducing idioms in sets and presenting them as systematic linguistic realizations of specific conceptual metaphors can promote learning. A number of studies provide experimental support for this hypothesis. Boers showed that organizing figurative expressions along metaphoric themes facilitates their retention.

In the translation task, the target idioms for the experimental group were presented under their conceptual metaphors, while for the control group they were listed in the order in which they appeared in the text.

After the translation task, the students were asked to complete a cloze test with the target idioms. The same test was repeated two days later and after five months. The experimental group outperformed the control group on all three tests. In short, experimental evidence suggests that the conceptual metaphor approach can enhance the encoding of L2 idioms, making them more semantically transparent and more memorable to the learners. Dual-coding theory is a theory of cognition initially formulated by Alan Paivio in , which holds that the human mind operates with two types of mental codes: one which controls encoding, storage and the retrieval of verbal input, and the other which processes visual information.

The two levels of mental representation are functionally independent but interconnected, and therefore input that is encoded both visually and verbally is likely to be remembered and retrieved more easily than information for which there is one code only. A large number of experimental studies have provided evidence in support of the dual-coding theory.

For example, people were found to have more difficulty performing two tasks that draw on the same mental code i. Dual-coding is also believed to contribute to word memorability. Better retention rates for concrete words and their higher imageability ratings have been attributed to the fact that they have both a verbal and a sensory code Baddeley, The dual-coding theory was one of the leading cognitive theories of the 20th century.

It sparked an enormous amount of research, and it had an immense impact on psychology, cognitive science, and education, including language teaching.

Although the theory never won universal acceptance and was criticized for failing to account for aspects of human cognition other than words and images, there is overwhelming empirical support for the mnemonic effect of the dual coding of input.

This prompted a new line of research that looked for ways to accommodate the principles of the dual coding theory in second language vocabulary teaching, including the teaching of idiomatic language. Some of these studies examined the effect of perceptual imagery, while others looked into the functional impact of mental imagery.

Boers et al. In the study that concerned idioms, learners were asked to guess the source domains of one hundred English idioms, select their correct definitions and complete a gap-fill exercise with a missing key word in the target phrases. The students received feedback after each stage. The results suggested a positive influence of visual input although the authors warned against a possible interfering effect of pictorial support when it comes to the acquisition of the structural properties of idiomatic phrases in the case of visual learners.

In , Boers and his colleagues conducted a follow-up study in which they compared the effects of idiom teaching through verbal definitions only, with the instruction where definitions were accompanied with pictorial support.

Similar results were obtained. Pictorial support was found to facilitate the acquisition of idiom meanings, but had a limited effect on the retention of their linguistic form. Szczepaniak and Lew studied the mnemonic effect of imagery in idiom dictionaries. Four treatment conditions were compared:. Visual support in conditions 3 and 4 consisted of pictures which showed the literal meanings of the idiomatic expressions or one of their component words.

The results suggested a positive effect of pictorial support on the acquisition of both idiom meanings and their linguistic forms. Vasiljevic compared idiom acquisition when the input consisted of verbal definitions only, and when the definitions were accompanied by learner-generated illustrations of the target expressions. A combination of visual and verbal clues was found to be an effective way for helping learners remember L2 idioms, in particular their linguistic form.

In short, while there is still no conclusive evidence with regard to whether pictorial support promotes more retention of idiom meaning or retention of their linguistic form, there is little doubt that visual input can facilitate the learning process. In addition to perceptual imagery, a number of studies examined the effect of mental imagery on idiom acquisition. In , Boers conducted a small-scale study with Dutch learners of English which specifically examined the role that mental imagery might play in idiom processing.

After the learners confirmed the meanings of ten English idioms in a monolingual dictionary, the experimental group was asked to hypothesize about the idiom origin, while the control group had to think of a possible context in which the phrases could be used. The experimental group did significantly better than the control group in tests of both receptive and productive knowledge.

In , Boers and his colleagues conducted another study that investigated the effect that the salience of source domains has on the acquisition of L2 idioms. The phrases for which the source domains were correctly identified were classified as etymologically transparent to the learners. The students received brief feedback on the etymology of each idiom, but no explicit reference was made to their current figurative meanings.

The post-test was designed as a gap-fill task, where the target idioms were presented in a suggestive context and the learners were asked to supply the missing keyword from each phrase. Two main findings were noted.

First, the correct identification of an idiom meaning tended to coincide with the recognition of its source domain. This was interpreted as evidence that idiomatic language is at least to some extent etymologically transparent to second language learners.

The results were taken as evidence of a positive mnemonic effect of etymological feedback. Clarification of the idiom origins was believed to have triggered the dual-coding of the target phrases regardless of whether learners were successful or not at identifying their source domains. Vasiljevic compared idiom retention and recall rates when the instructional treatment consisted of verbal definitions only, and when input was enriched by etymological notes. The results showed that etymological feedback facilitated long-term comprehension and production of L2 idioms.

In , Vasiljevic conducted a follow-up study which examined the effects of perceptual imagery pictorial support and mental imagery etymological feedback on the retention of the meaning and form of L2 idioms.

The results showed that etymological notes promoted the retention of idiom meaning, whilst pictures facilitated the recall of their linguistic form. However, not all experimental data support the use of etymology in L2 idiom teaching. In the aforementioned study by Szczepaniak and Lew , etymology-based instruction was found to be less effective than pictorial support.

However, the authors also acknowledge that the results of the study may have been influenced by the experimental design. In short, despite some discrepancies in findings, the currently available experimental evidence provides persuasive support for a positive effect of etymology-based instruction on the comprehension and production of idiomatic language in L2. The levels-of processing-theory, initially proposed by Craik and Lockhart in , stipulates that the amount of information that is retained in long-term memory depends on the amount of cognitive effort invested at the information processing stage.

Richer, more elaborate coding results in stronger memory traces and better information recall. Cognitive task demands may be one reason behind the differences in findings between the studies conducted by Boers and his colleagues Boers ; Boers et al. The reading of etymological entries does not require as much cognitive effort as etymological elaboration and, as a result, the memory traces may not have been deep enough to result in long-term information retention.

Supporting evidence for a positive mnemonic effect of deep information processing in idiom learning comes also from a study conducted by Vasiljevic The study compared the acquisition of L2 idioms when pictorial support consisted of illustrations provided by the instructor, and when the pictures were drawn by the learners themselves.

Both the receptive and the productive test scores were found to be higher when the students generated their own images. One possible explanation for the results is the cognitive demands that the illustration task posed on the learners.

In order to illustrate the target idioms, the learners had to direct their attention to the lexical make-up of the phrases. This is believed to have strengthened referential connections between verbal and visual representations, leading to deeper coding of the input and its better retention. Encouraging students to engage in the elaborative mental processing of figurative language should help them remember idiomatic phrases better. The learners were asked to select the source domains of the target idioms from five options.

Only when they selected the correct domain did they get feedback on the origins of the expressions. This meant that some learners had to click three or four times before they received any information about the expressions. McPherron and Randolph also highlight the important role that emotions play in learning. Therefore, the teacher must be careful to design the tasks that will not only promote cognitive processing of the input, but also enhance the emotional involvement of the learners.

In summary, there is substantial experimental evidence that idiom encoding can be facilitated through cognitive linguistic approaches, such as the identification of conceptual metaphors and source domains, presentation of pictorial support, and the analysis of etymological semantics.

These findings offer both teachers and learners new options that go beyond the outdated method of rote memorization. However, when selecting or designing a learning task, teachers should not only consider its cognitive dimension, but also its potential affective impact on the learners. After the initial input encoding, the learning outcomes will also depend on how the information is stored in memory. Knowledge in the human brain is believed to be stored in a network of hierarchically-related concepts.

Each concept has a number of attributes, which are present to a different degree in individual instances of the phenomenon they denote. To access knowledge, the human memory system takes advantage of language predictability, semantic restrictions imposed by the context, and general knowledge of the world cf. While some concepts are universal, others are historical or culture-specific. Indeed, experimental studies of cross-cultural idiom comprehension e.

Therefore, cognitive approaches to idiom teaching, such as etymological elaboration and the identification of conceptual metaphors, are expected to benefit the learner not only at the phrase-encoding stage, but also when it comes to the storage of the expressions in the mental lexicon, as they are also likely to facilitate the building of relevant cultural and historical schemata that go beyond individual expressions. Linking of idioms to their conceptual metaphors or common source domains can help learners organise idiomatic language.

Finally, as postulated by the dual-coding theory, visual and verbal memory codes can also facilitate information retention. Images both perceptual and mental can help learners to unify individual lexical components within idiomatic phrases into coherent conceptual representations, and the existence of two different levels of mental representation increases the strength of memory traces and offers alternative channels for their retrieval.

Stored information will be of little value to the learner if it cannot be retrieved. Retrieval is a process in which information stored in the brain is brought back to a conscious level in a response to some cue. As Baddeley points out, the amount of information that is stored in the brain is much larger than the amount of information that can be retrieved at any given time. The ease of information retrieval depends on a number of factors that include the depth of processing, the time that has lapsed since input encoding, information difficulty, distribution of learning sessions, possible interference of subsequent input, and the frequency with which information is retrieved.

As discussed earlier, the depth of input coding affects the subsequent storage and the retrievability of information. Information that is encoded semantically, with rich and elaborate representations, is likely to be more accessible than information that is processed in a simple, superficial manner Baddeley, In his classic study of memory trace formation and loss, Ebbinghaus found that information loss tends to be logarithmic rather than linear — forgetting occurs quickly at first and then slows down gradually.

This proved to be true for many types of learned materials. With regard to language learning, Bahrick and Phelps found that forgetting tends to be fastest in the first two years after the learning period and then levels off with little change over the next thirty years.

Another factor that contributes to the durability of memory traces is the distribution of learning. Spaced learning i. In other words, learning little and often is more beneficial than a couple of marathon lessons cf. The durability of memory traces has also been found to depend on the subsequent input.

Interference can be both proactive and retroactive. That is old memories may interfere with the formation of new memory traces, or new memory traces may lead to the decay of older memories. An implication for language teaching is that words or phrases that could potentially cause interference should not be taught together. The target phrases were also of the same length, both beginning with a verb.

Considering all these similarities, above it is easy to see how the mix-up of lexical items has occurred. Teachers must pay close attention to item selection in order to reduce the potential interference effect.

Finally, the frequency with which information is selected for retrieval can also promote learning. Tulving demonstrated that multiple attempts to recall information contribute to learning.