The Effect of a Proposed Program Integrating the REACT Strategy and Drama Activities on Fostering EFL idioms Comprehension and Production among Faculty of Mass Communication Students

The aim of the current study was to develop EFL first year Faculty of Mass communication students’ comprehension and production of idiomatic expressions through a proposed program integrating the REACT strategy of the Contextual Learning Approach and the drama activities of miming, dramatized storytelling, role playing, simulation and improvisation. It focused on developing the experimental group students’ comprehension and production of ten types of idiomatic expressions. These were color, food, number, body parts, animal, nature, plants, clothes, weather and house parts idioms. The study followed the quasi-experimental pretest- posttest control group/ experimental group design where two intact groups were randomly assigned to the control and experimental groups. The study tools included a pre- /post- idioms comprehension test and a pre-/post- idioms production test. Results indicated that the experimental group students outperformed the control group students on the idioms comprehension and production posttests. Also, there were statistically significant differences between the experimental group students' pre- tests and post- tests scores in favour of the posttests scores. Therefore, it was concluded that the proposed program was effective in developing the experimental group students' comprehension and production of English idioms.