A Comparative Study Of Non-literal English Idiom Comprehension By High And Low Proficiency EFL Learners

The thesis aims at finding out the difference between Chinese EFL high and low proficiency learners on non-literal English idiom comprehension when guessing unknown non-literal English idioms in a context.Based on the claim that there are differences in the use of language learning strategies between high and low proficiency learners,and with the help of relevant researches from both home and abroad,the thesis tries to find answers to the four questions:1) what are the most frequently used strategies by high and low proficiency EFL learners when comprehending non-literal English idioms,2) whether the accuracy of non-literal idiom comprehension correlates with English proficiency,3) which strategies best facilitate high and low proficiency EFL learners' non-literal idiom comprehension respectively,thus leading to accuracy in idiom comprehension,and 4) what lead to high and low proficiency EFL learners' wrong guesses of the meanings of the idioms.Data are collected by means of think-aloud,L2 to L1 translation test and interview.After analyzing the data,12 non-literal English idiom comprehension strategies are identified.Based on the results,the thesis comes to four principal conclusions:1) Four strategies—contextual inference,using the literal meaning of the idiom, conventional knowledge search and conceptual metaphor search are used more frequently than other eight strategies(the total percentage of strategy usage for the four strategies is 72%,with 28%for the other eight strategies) by high proficiency EFL learners. And four strategies—contextual inference,using the literal meaning of the idiom, conventional knowledge search and inquiry are used more frequently(69.6%) than others by low proficiency EFL learners.2) With the analysis of the scores in the idiom comprehension test,it is found that the accuracy of non-literal idiom comprehension correlates with English proficiency.3) There seems to be no one specific strategy that can best facilitate idiom comprehension and lead to accurate guessing.Without the use of the others,one strategy is apparently not enough to narrow down possible guesses.Accurate guessing depends on the right understanding of both the context and the idioms' literal meaning as well as the integrated use of all possible strategies to narrow down guesses especially for the case in which the idiom is a very difficult one.4) There are many reasons leading to wrong guesses of non-literal idioms.For high proficiency learners,it is mostly due to the fact that they do not know how to find proper Chinese words to describe what is in their mind,the unawareness of testing the guessed meaning by integrating all possible strategies and the bridge between English and Chinese cultures which greatly affects the cognitive and conceptual system as well as the misunderstandings of the context and the idioms' literal meaning.For low proficiency learners,they share the five above-mentioned reasons with their high proficiency peers but have two more important reasons—insufficient language competence and the lack of language awareness.The findings throw light on L2 idiom teaching:1) It is advisable that teachers try to offer more practice to help students know how to guess non-literal idioms by applying guessing strategies,thus,making them accustomed with guessing and dropping the habit of looking every unknown idiom up in a dictionary.2) To avoid learners' failure in tackling idioms whose images do not often exist in learners' everyday life,teachers should encourage learners to enrich their schemata by reading various genres of English and watching English TV series and as well as experience real things in their daily life so that they will be able to relate important information presented in the idiom with the information stored in their long-term memory,activate and use those knowledge to interpret it,and reconsider and revise hypotheses about the meaning of the idiom.3) Teachers should pay attention to the conceptual metaphor aspect of idiom learning.Since many conceptual metaphors can be found in authentic English materials,the feasible teaching approaches suggested include the use of current authentic English materials such as magazines,best selling short stories,TV news, films,talk shows,etc.,and the introduction of relevant cultural background knowledge related to the conceptual metaphors concerned.4) Idioms taught in isolation are generally not retained and the full meaning of words can only come from encountering them in a rich linguistic environment.It is advisable to create a sense of need for idiom by present idioms in a natural linguistic context in which learners need to use the idioms they have learnt to achieve a certain communicative purpose.Finally,the thesis presents some feasible teaching recommendations which might be helpful to the improvement of idiom teaching in EFL situations.