Graduation Year

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Language, Literacy, ED.D., Exceptional Education, and Physical Education

Major Professor

John I. Liontas, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Sanghoon Park, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Jennifer Wolgemuth, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Michael Sherry, Ph.D.

Keywords

idiomatic expressions, figurative language, idioms, digital memes, cultural competence, social media

Abstract

Students nowadays live in a visually rich world where they continually generate meaning and knowledge through images (Romero & Bobkina, 2017). To satisfy two technology-savvy generations, the Millennial and Generation Z, field practitioners had to generate multimodal environments that include written text, visual images, and design elements from various viewpoints. An effective pedagogy of idiomatics can support second language acquisition (SLA) and idiomatic competence development, that is, idiomatic language and figurative language study (Liontas, 2021, p. 3, 32). Idiomatics should be incorporated into educational programs for SL learners as early in their education as possible (Liontas, 2008). For my study, I proposed incorporating digital memes in the SL classroom as a trending digital form to assist English learners in learning and understanding idiomatics and increase their learning motivation. In this study, I explored and investigated the impact of incorporating digital memes on English learners’ understanding of idiomatics. This study has two purposes: (1) explore how SL learners perceive the usage of digital memes in understanding and learning idiomatics and (2) investigate how incorporating digital memes in understanding idiomatics assists in motivating SL learners and improves their intercultural competence. Furthermore, this study bridges the gap between theory and application in that it tried to develop broad implications for teaching idiomatics in the language classroom by utilizing a Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) tool—memes as a social media instrument. However, the study focused on digital memes in the SL classroom to enhance cultural competence among learners. I employed a qualitative exploratory descriptive design because most of the previous work focused on the use of social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Pinterest) in SL learning, which examined their impact on learners. Unfortunately, there was a lack of research on exploring the incorporation of digital memes in the SL classroom idiomatics knowledge. Seven non-native English-speaking learners (ESL students) studying at a major university in the Southeastern region of the United States volunteered for this study. I collected data utilizing four tasks: the Pre-Study Survey, the Modeling Task, the Post-Study Survey, and the Post-Study Semi-Structured Interview. The results provided three distinct insights surrounding English idiomatics’ learning and comprehension. First, there is a need to teach idiomatics. This is determined by the variation between participants’ perceived and actual performance during the study’s Modeling Task. Additionally, participants’ responses to the Pre-Study Survey questions confirmed this insight. Second, the strategies used by these seven participants were quite similar but with some degree of variation in usage. This indicates that the processing of idiomatics among these participants is more alike than they are actually different. Furthermore, the study confirmed that incorporating digital memes positively impacted learners’ motivation to learn idiomatics, where it added humor to the learning materials and made the participants more engaged. Finally, second and/or foreign language teachers in the field of SLA can implement the strategies gathered from this study, such as utilizing context clues, recollection, referring to native language, and guessing in the designing and developing curricula that address the needs and challenges of SL learners.

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