The Effect of Textual Enhancement Technique on Incidental Learning of Idiomatic Expressions of Iranian Intermediate Students Pegah Pam English Department, Hamedan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Hamedan, Iran Lotfollah Karimi English Department, Hamedan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Hamedan, Iran Abstract—One of the techniques affecting incidental learning is using textual enhancement. This study was conducted in order to see whether textual enhancement positively affects incidental learning of idiomatic expressions. To do so, a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest control group design was carried out. The participants were 40 Iranian intermediate learners selected via convenient sampling and were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups, 20 participants in each. Before the treatment, Idiom Knowledge Scale (IKS) test, taken from Wesche and Paribakht's (1996) was administered to both groups, as pretest. Then the experimental group was exposed to idioms presented with four different textual enhancement techniques (color-coded, bolded, Italic and sticky papers). After the treatment, IKS, was again administered to the groups, as posttest. The results of data analysis through ANCOVA indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group and that the implementation of textual techniques could enhance the incidental idiom learning. Index Terms—textual enhancement, incidental learning, idiomatic expressions I. INTRODUCTION Learning idioms can be considered as an integral part of vocabulary learning. Textual enhancement (TE) has been defined by Nassaji and Fotos (2011) as "an external attention drawing device whereby any particular feature of the oral or written input can be made perceptually salient to L2 learners in a planned way so that they can notice the targeted forms without any explicit metalinguistic explanation" (p. 41) (as cited in Jahan, and Kormos, 2015). Burke (1998) claims that “knowledge of slang and idioms is fundamental to nonnative speakers' understanding of the language that native speakers actually use” (p. 5) (as cited in Jessica, Rodriguez, 2013). Considering the large portion of idioms in any discourse, one can claim that idiom learning is a challenging task for language learners. One of the problems of language learners is, after attending many English classes for some years, not being able to use idioms naturally as natives do. Perhaps, one of the reasons for this problem is the approaches utilized to teach them. The learners need some novel methods that makes them interested in idiom learning, change the mood of the class positively, and also stimulate their learning process at the same time (Huyen & Nga, 2003). According to Decarrico (2001) “learning occurs when the mind is focused el sewhere, such as on understanding a text or using language for communicative purposes” (p. 289) (as cited in Tanimi, 2015). A great portion of lexical items in first language (L1) and second language (L2) is acquired incidentally (Hulstijn, 2003). So there seems to be a need to provide opportunities for greater incidental idiomatic expressions learning in the classroom. In 1981, Sharwood Smith presented the technique of consciousness-raising as an attempt to solve second/foreign language teaching/learning problems that appeared in focus on forms approaches. Consciousness-raising means that the language teacher tries to raise the language learners’ consciousness of the new target form(s). However, the syllabus was still synthetic (Rutherford & Sharwood Smith, 1989; Sharwood Smith, 1981). In addition, Sharwood Smith (1991) stated that even if the language learners paid attention to the enhanced target forms, this does not guarantee that they will be able to internalize the form. Moreover, many (Truscott, 1998) have criticized the term because of the lack of the theoretical support for the relationship between conscious and input processing. Therefore, Sharwood Smith (1991, 1993) replaced the consciousness-raising term by input enhancement that the teacher can control. The role of input enhancement is to make some forms of the second/foreign language more salient in order to draw the language learners' attention to them. In fact, Sharwood Smith (1991, 1993) divided salience into two kinds: external salience that the teacher or researcher can manipulate and internal salience that language learners cause. There are some techniques that teachers or researchers could use to increase the external salience. As for the internal salience, Park and Han (2008) suggested some factors that can enhance such a kind of salience. These factors are comprehension failure, the learner's current inter-language knowledge, the learner's bias for meaning over form, learners differences and the learner's first language. ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 6, No. 5, pp. 1121-1127, May 2016 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0605.28 © 2016 ACADEMY PUBLICATION