Running Head: THE EFFECTS OF STUDENT-LED INSTRUCTION The Effects of Student-Led Instruction on Comprehension of Idioms

The purpose of this project is to examine the effectiveness of student-led instructional interventions in the general comprehension of American idiomatic phrases; their meanings and acceptable uses. At INTO CSU the intensive Academic English Program on campus, I had the opportunity to teach a high-intermediate (200) level Listening and Speaking course. In the set curriculum for that class, a list of 39 American idioms, chosen for their appropriateness to that level, was provided for students. They were tasked to choose an idiom then find out its meaning and use. Possible methods for understanding the meaning of the idiom were: guessing and confirming with other classmates or the teacher, checking the internet, asking a (native speaker or nonnative speaker with near-native proficiency) Conversation Partner, or asking another American friend the student had access to. The meanings and uses of each idiom were not explicitly taught in class by the teacher. Once students had chosen their specific idiom, they were assigned to groups of three or four, then were allowed time to invent a scenario and write a dialogue in which they each used their idiom, talking amongst themselves in the group. Students were given 15 minutes to confirm the meanings of their idioms, check the appropriateness of their dialogue, during which time direct feedback was provided individually to students about their chosen idiom in particular, then to practice their dialogue as a group before presenting it. The direct instruction aspect of the project is from the in-class presentations, which is the content the students will be tested over. Each group of students delivered

THE EFFECTS OF STUDENT-LED INSTRUCTION

their presentations while their classmates took notes, after which the class was asked to identify the meanings of the idioms from the context of the presentations. The teacher confirmed their guesses when correct, and asked for different answers when incorrect. Students were then able to study the correct meanings of idioms, if they listened and learned them during the class time, before the midterm exam was given. Because of time constraints in class, students were only tested over 13 idioms. The hypothesis being tested is that students will all get each of six idioms correct on the midterm exam, and each of 13 idioms correct on the final exam. A class poll on the third day of the term showed that students did not know any of these idioms prior to enrolling in this class, and before the midterm exam was given, 6 of these 13 idioms were among those learned in class from student presentations. The midterm idioms were continually clarified and reinforced throughout the remainder of the term, and additional idioms were learned from student presentations during the remaining weeks of the course. Once again due to time constraints, only 7 of the newly-learned idioms were tested on the exam. The students were asked to listen to teacher-created scenarios, then fill in the blank using the idiom that best fit. All efforts were made to avoid creating a scenario where more than one idiom could be reasonably applied. Based on the scores of the students on both the midterm idiom exam and the final idiom exam, knowing that no one student felt confident enough to explain any of the 39 idioms at the start of the class, it is clear that students are learning and improving through student-led dialogues as a method of direct instruction. The hypothesis was certainly optimistic in terms of hoping that every student would correctly identify each of the idioms presented by other classmates in class, and that hypothesis was not

THE EFFECTS OF STUDENT-LED INSTRUCTION upheld. However, while some students did choose an incorrect idiom for a given situation a few times, or some students left the answers blank, for the most part each student performed extremely well on the midterm idiom test with the 6 idioms they should have known at that point in the term, and again on the final idiom test when they had been taught the remaining 7 idioms by their classmates. I am very pleased with the results of this study, because it tells me that even

when I as the teacher am not providing direct instruction, students are still able to learn effectively through inductive methods; deducing the meaning of certain phrases from their use in context.