Abstract-The present study investigated the effect of using picture, Persian translation equivalent (L1), and English definition (L2) on the learning of 20 decomposable and nondecomposable idioms by 68 Iranian TEFL undergraduates. The focus was on learning both meaning as well as form of the idioms. The idioms were given to the participants to translate into Persian three weeks before the experiment to ensure the participants' unfamiliarity of the idioms. The idioms that were known even by one student were crossed out. Each group of the participants received the instruction in 3 sessions (about 7 idioms each session), and reviewed them in the fourth. The participants received 2 recognition tests (one on form and the other on meaning of the L2 idioms) in the form of multiple-choice in the fifth session, and the same recognition as well as 2 production tests in the form of fill-in-the-blanks 3 weeks later (first on form and then on meaning). The delayed posttests were given in 2 consecutive sessions: first, the production and then the recognition. The findings showed that the picture group outperformed the other groups in all situations. However, a significant outperformance of L1 group over L2 group was observed for decomposable idioms in the first posttest regarding form. The results suggest the pedagogical value of pictures for the teaching of meaning and form of decomposable idioms.

The use of student-centered methods in language teaching can be an alternative to be exerted by teachers in language classrooms. Such methods can create an atmosphere of excitement for the students because they themselves are supposed to discover word meanings, grammatical patterns, parts of speech and other aspects of language through receiving small tips from the teacher. In the present paper, data-driven learning (DDL) has been introduced as a student-centered technique in which samples of authentic language are taken from linguistic corpora to be presented to language learners for improving language proficiency and then different aspects of this technique have been elaborated on in order to make language teachers and students aware of its features and usefulness

Abstract-Idioms are an important part of a language, as they are used to express ideas in a more concise and effective way. Idioms have a considerable role in a foreign language as in the mother tongue. Therefore, their learning and teaching in L2 are worthy of attention and research. This paper intends to define idioms, introduce their different taxonomies, discuss L2 idiom processing and comprehension, and use the information to endow English teachers with some pedagogical implications.Index Terms-idiom taxonomies, idiom comprehension, literal and figurative meaning, opaque and transparent idioms

Abstract-This study investigated the repair strategies employed by Iranian female and male intermediate EFL learners to find out if there were differences in the usage of repair strategies by class type (single-gender vs. mixed-gender) and the gender of the learners and the teacher. The participants of the study were 32 EFL learners (16 males and 16 females). At first, all of the learners were assigned to a mixed-gender class and the textbook was taught to them during 16 sessions (eight sessions with a male teacher and eight sessions with a female teacher). Then the learners were divided into two single-gender classes and teaching of the textbook continued for the two classes. All the sessions were video recorded. Then, the learners' repair strategies were analyzed through the study. The results revealed three important findings. First, single-classes used more repair strategies than mixed-classes. Second, there was no difference in using the repair strategies based on the gender of the learners, irrespective of the gender of the teacher. Third, there was no difference in using the repair strategies based on the gender of the teacher. The findings add new information to L2 research on repair strategies and, pedagogically speaking, the findings of the study have implications for EFL teachers and students.

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