When does assonance make L2 lexical phrases memorable?

Among the challenges that second language learners face is that of acquiring a large num-ber of lexical phrases such as collocations and idiomatic expressions (e.g. Pawley & Syder, 1983; Willis, 1990; Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992; Lewis, 1993). There is evidence that post-childhood learners master this dimension of L2 vocabulary very slowly (e.g. Li & Schmitt, 2010; Laufer & Waldman, 2011). In recent years, researchers have tested diverse proposals about how learners can be helped to acquire L2 phrases (see Boers & Lind-stromberg, 2012). The factor we explore in the present article, however, is a phonological feature that may make word combinations relatively noticeable and easy to acquire, namely, assonance