L2 Idioms Recall: On the Effectiveness of Task Focus and Involvement Load

Finding effective ways to improve L2 idioms recall has been a long-standing concern of many practitioners. This study compared the effects of meaning-focused and form-focused tasks with varying involvement load indices on EFL learners' recall of L2 idioms. One-hundred eighty intermediate level EFL learners participated in this study and were randomly assigned to one of the six experimental groups. In three form-focused groups, the participants received multiple-choice, sentence-completion and sentence-making tasks with involvement indices of 2, 3, and 4, respectively. In three meaning-focused groups, they were asked to perform summary writing, writing with glossary, and writing without glossary with involvement degrees of 2, 3, and 4, respectively. A 30-item test in fill-in-the-blank format was administered to all groups to assess their recall of idioms after the treatment. To analyze the data, a two-way ANOVA and a series of independent-samples t-tests were used. The results showed that the tasks with higher degrees of involvement were more efficient on the recall of idioms. The results also revealed that although form-focused tasks were significantly more effective than meaning-focused tasks at lower loads of involvement, at higher involvement load, the difference between form-focused and meaning-focused tasks was not significant. The findings of the present study can have theoretical as well as pedagogical implications for learners, teachers, textbook designers, and curriculum developers.