An Empirical Study Of Non-english Majors’ Acquisition Of English Idioms With Cognitive Approach

This study aimed to explore the influences of cognitive approach in idiomacquisition for non-English major college students through experiments.60freshmenof non-English majors from Qingdao University of Science and Technology wereinvolved in the experiment. They were from two natural classes: one class was theexperimental group; the other was the control group. The experiment process consistsof a quantitative study which including a questionnaire before the pre-test, a pre-test,idiom instruction, a post-test and a questionnaire after the post-test; and a qualitativestudy which employs the form of interview. The experiment was carried out for awhole semester with cognitive approach which mainly based on conceptual metaphorin the experimental group in contrast to a traditional approach in the control group. Thestudy data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and independent sample t-test.Through the comparison of learning effects and different strategies between groupsand within group, the findings can be concluded as follows:(1) The grasp of theconceptual metaphor underlying English idioms can help learners to effectivelymemorize idioms and image schemas and mental images are also considered as a wayof facilitating the comprehension of conceptual metaphors;(2) Raising metaphoricaland cultural awareness enhances the learners’ ability to use English idioms in oralexpressions. The present study, as a supplement to the previous studies, furtherconfirms that cognitive approach plays a positive role in idiom acquisition. It alsobrings out some pedagogical implications to facilitate English idiom teaching andlearning for Chinese college students, especially non-English majors.