| The purpose of this study is to investigate whether or not idioms can be transferred? Do L1 Chinese learners of L2 English use the knowledge of their L1 to help the comprehension of L2 idioms? What kinds of strategies do they employ in the process of comprehending? Thirty English idioms are chosen from dictionary and are put into three groups: identical metaphor idioms group, similar metaphor idioms group and different metaphor idioms group. Thirty-four non-English majors of their third year in UIBE participated in the task, where they were asked to give (1) a literal translation to the L2 (English) idioms; (2) explanation of the meanings of the L2 (English) idioms in L1 (Chinese); (3) L1 (Chinese) equivalents. The result showed that with the help of the L1, idioms in group one were be best comprehended; the students managed to understand the idioms in the second group despite slight differences and idioms in group three were the most difficult to decipher. Sixteen students out of the total of thirty-four, volunteered to take part in the think-aloud test where they need to verbalize their process of comprehending fifteen L2 idioms and the comprehension strategies were examinated and results show when comprehending idioms, literal translation is the most frequently used strategy (27% of the time), followed by searching for an exact or similar match (21% of the time), using background knowledge (19% of the time), consulting glossary (17% of the time), metaphor search (11% of the time) and paraphrasing (5% of the time).The results of the present study match the hypotheses, which believe (1) idioms can be transferred; (2) during the comprehension of the L2 idioms, subjects will turn to Chinese for assistance and (3) they will translate the English idioms into Chinese and search for a match.
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