English Idiom Processing And Production Strategies By Chinese ESL Learners

English idioms are one of the most difficult areas of foreign language teaching and learning for EFL teachers and students. We can hardly tell their meanings as L2 learners from the surface or literal meanings of most of idioms. However, native speakers have little problem in understanding them. Though difficult, idioms are very useful in EFL teaching and learning at the same time. How idioms are acquired in an L2 is clearly an area worthy of study. But most of the research on idiom has only involved native speakers. Furthermore, little research has been done to compare the differences between different levels of Chinese EFL learners when they encounter an idiomatic expression and the influence of language transfer in this respect.In this article it first reviews the research on L1 and L2 idiom comprehension and then describes this study of the on-line processing strategies. Two groups of ESL learners, 80 in all, as two different English proficiency levels are asked to comprehend a set of idioms in zero context and in a one-to-two sentences context respectively. On the basis of the results and by using TA protocol, strategies that are employed by these participants and whether or not language transfer is taking effect in the process of comprehension and production of idioms by Chinese EFL learner of different proficiency levels are tracked down. Thus, the set of aims in this study are to see the strategies and their usefulness while Chinese EFL learners comprehend and produce English idioms; the differences, if any, between different efficiency levels students while employing those strategies; if language transfer is taking effect when Chinese ESL learners process and produce the idioms, positive or negative. And on what stage it's positive and on what stage it's negative? Hopefully through all these, some useful strategies could be employed when Chinese EFL learners encounter idioms in their future studies. And pedagogical implications could be achieved for both Chinese ESL learners and teachers.