Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 University of Isfahan
2 Univerisity of Isfahan
Abstract
The present study aimed to examine and compare the impact of teaching economic terms through etymological elaboration with three more conventional methods of vocabulary instruction in ESP courses in Iran, that is, teaching through contextual definitions, L1 translation, and implicit instruction on the learners' general comprehension of economic texts and their understanding of author's opinion. As for general comprehension, the performance of students on the reading comprehension test was not affected by vocabulary instruction method in the four groups. In other words, it seemed that there was no causal relationship between the vocabulary instruction method and general reading comprehension. Regarding author's opinion, the results showed a superiority of etymological elaboration over contextual definition, translation, and implicit instruction.
Keywords
Alderson, C. (2000). Reading assessment. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Anderson, R. C., & Freebody, P. (1981). Vocabulary knowledge. In J. Guthrie (Ed.), Comprehension and teaching: Research reviews (pp. 77-117). Newark, Del.: International Reading Association.
Beck, I. L., Perfetti, C. A., & McKeown, M. G. (1982). Effects of long-term vocabulary instruction on lexical access and reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 74, 506–521.
Boers, F. (2000a). Metaphor awareness and vocabulary retention. Applied Linguistics, 21, 553–571.
Boers, F. (2000b). Enhancing metaphoric awareness in specialised reading. English for Specific Purposes, 19, 137–147.
Boers, F. (2001). Remembering figurative idioms by hypothesizing about their origin. Prospect, 16(3), 34–43.
Boers, F. (2013). Cognitive Linguistic approaches to teaching vocabulary: Assessment and integration. Language Teaching, 46(2), 208–224.
Boers, F., Demecheleer, M., & Eyckmans, J. (2004b). Etymological elaboration as a strategy for learning idioms. In P. Boggards & B. Laufer (Eds.), Vocabulary in a second language: Selection, acquisition and testing (pp. 53–78). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Boers, F., & Lindstromberg, S. (2006). Cognitive Linguistic approaches to second or foreign language instruction: Rationale, proposals and evaluation. In: G. Kristaensen, R. Dirven, M. Achard & Ruiz-Mendoza (Eds.), Cognitive linguistics: current applications and future perspectives (pp. 305-358). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Boers, F., & Lindstromberg,S. (2008). Opening chapter: How cognitive linguistics can foster effective vocabulary teaching. In F.
Boers & S. Lindstromberg (Eds.), Cognitive linguistic approaches to teaching vocabulary and phraseology (pp. 1–61). New York: De Gruyter.
Bossers, B. (1992). Reading in two languages: a study of reading comprehension in Dutch as a second language and in Turkish as a first language. Rotterdam, The Netherlands:Drukkerij Van Driel.
Caballero, Rodriguez, M. (2003). How to talk shop through metaphor. Bringing metaphor research to the ESP classroom. English for Specific Purposes, 22, 177-194.
Cermak, L. S. & Craik, F. I. M. (1979). Levels of processing in human memory. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Charteris-Black, J. (2000). Metaphor and vocabulary teaching in ESP economics. English for Specific Purposes, 19, 149-165.
Charteris-Black, J., & Ennis. T. (2001). A comparative study of metaphor in Spanish and English financial reporting. English for Specific Purposes, 20(3), 249–266.
Charteris-Black, J., & Musolff, A. (2003). Battered hero or innocent victim? A comparative study of metaphors for euro trading in British and German financial reporting. English for Specific Purposes, 22(2), 153–176.
Clark, J. M., and Paivio. A. (1991). Dual coding theory and education. Educational Psychology Review, 3, 233–262.
Csábi, S. (2004). A cognitive linguistic view of polysemy in English and its implications for teaching. In M. Achard & S. Niemeier (Eds.), Cognitive linguistics, second language acquisition and foreign language teaching (pp. 233–256). Berlin, New York: De Gruyter.
Dakun, W. (2000). Vocabulary Acquisition: Implicit Learning and Explicit Teaching. REACT, 2, 15–22
Daneman, M. (1991). Individual differences in reading skills. In R. Barr, M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, & P. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2, pp. 512–538). White Plains, NY: Longman.
Danesi, M. (1986). The role of metaphor in second language pedagogy. Rassegna Italiana Di Linguistica Applicata, 18(3), 1–10.
Danesi, M. (1993). Metaphorical competence in second language acquisition and second language teaching: the neglected dimension. In J. E. Alatis (Ed.), Language, and Social meaning (48-500).Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press.
Deignan, A., Gabrys,D. & Solska, A. (1997). Teaching English metaphors using cross-linguistic awareness-raising activities. ELT Journal 51,352–360.
Droop, M., & Verhoeven, L. (2003). Language proficiency and reading ability in first and second language learners. Reading Research Quarterly, 38, 78-103.
Gass, S. (1999).Incidental vocabulary learning: Discussion. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21(3), 19-33.
Guo, S. (2007). Is idiom comprehension influenced by metaphor awareness of the learners? A case study of Chinese EFL learners. The Linguistics Journal, 3(3), 148–166.
Henderson, W. (1982). Metaphor in Economics. Economics 18, 147-153.
Henderson, W. (1994). Metaphor and economics. In R. E. Backhouse (Ed.), New Directions in Economic Methodology (pp. 343-367). London: Routledge.
Hiebert, E. H. & Kamil. (2005). Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Jeffreys, D. (1982). Metaphor in economics—an illustrative. Economics, 18(4), 154-157.
Kövecses, Z. (2010). Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. (2nd Ed.) New York: Oxford University Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Laufer, B. (1997). What's in a word that makes it hard or easy: some intralexical factors that affect the learning of words. In N. Schmidtt & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Laufer, B., & Goldstein, Z. (2004).Testing vocabulary knowledge: Size, strength, and computer adaptiveness. Language Learning, 54(3), 399-436.
Laufer, B., & Sim, D. D. (1985). Measuring and explaining the reading threshold needed for English for academic purposes texts. Foreign Language Annals, 18, 405–411.
Lazar, G. (1996). Using figurative language to expand students' vocabulary. English Language Teaching Journal, 50(1), 43-51.
Lindstromberg, S. (1991). Metaphor and ESP: A ghost in the machine? English for Specific Purposes, 10(3), 207–225.
Low, G. D. (1998) ‘On teaching metaphor.’ Applied Linguistics 9(2), 125-147.
MacLennan, C. (1994). Metaphors and prototypes in the learning teaching of grammar and vocabulary. IRAL, 32(2), 97–110.
Mata, T., & and Lemercier. C. (2011). Speaking in tongues, a text analysis of economic opinion and Newsweek, 1975–2007 Duke University: hope CentreWorking Papers No.2011–02.
McCarthy, M. (1990/1994). Vocabulary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McCloskey, D. (1983). The rhetoric of economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 21, 481-517.
McCloskey, D. N. (1985). The rhetoric of economics. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Nagy, W. E. (1988). Teaching vocabulary to improve reading comprehension. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 298471.
Nassaji, H. (2003). L2 vocabulary learning from context: Strategies, knowledge sources, and their relationship with success in L2 lexical inferencing. TESOL Quarterly, 37 (4), 645-670.
Nation, P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Nation, P., &Kyongho, H. (1995) .Where would general vocabulary stop and special purposes vocabulary begin? System, 23(1), 35-41.
Nation, P., & Meara, P. (2002).Vocabulary. An introduction to applied linguistics, 35-54.
Paribakht, T.S & Wesche, M. (1997).Vocabulary enhancement activities and reading for meaning second language vocabulary acquisition. In Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition, J. Coady and T. Huckin (eds), 174–202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Qian, D. D. (2002). Investigating the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and academic reading performance: An assessment perspective. Language Learning, 52, 513–536.
Resche, C. (2012). Towards a better understanding of metaphorical networks in the language of economics: The importance of theory-constitutive metaphors. In H. Herrera-Soler, & M. White (Eds.), Metaphor and Mills: Figurative Language in Business and Economics (pp. 77-102). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Salager-Meyer, F. (1990). Metaphors in medical English prose: A comparative study with French and Spanish. English for Specific Purposes, 9(2), 145–159.
SavilleTroike, M. U. R. I. E. L. (1984). What really matters in second language learning for academic achievement?. TESOL quarterly, 18(2), 199-219.
Schoonen, R., Hulstijn, J., & Bossers, B. (1998). Metacognitive and language-specific knowledge in native and foreign language reading comprehension: An empirical study among Dutch students in grades 6, 8 and 10. Language Learning, 48, 71-106
Scott, M. (1994). Metaphors and language awareness. In L, Barbara & M. Scott (Eds.), Reflections on Language Learning (pp.89–104). Clevedon, U.K.:Multilingual Matters.
Sznajder, H. S. (2010). A corpus- based evaluation of metaphor in a business English textbook. English for Specific Purposes, 29(1), 30– 42.
Tannenbaum, K. R., Torgesen, J. K., & Wagner, R. K. (2006). Relationships between word knowledge and reading comprehension in third-grade children. Scientific Studies of Reading, 10, 381-398.
Verhoeven, L. (2000). Components of early second language reading and spelling. Scientific Studies of Reading, 4, 313-330.
White, M. (2003). Metaphor and economics: the case of growth. English for Specific Purposes, 22(2), 131–15.
)