Comprehension Of English Animal Idioms By Chinese EFL Learners

There exist great differences between Chinese and English cultures, and they are well embodied in idioms. English idioms constitute an important part of English vocabulary, and it plays a significant role in judging an English learner's language competence. Idioms, however, constitute one of the most difficult areas of foreign language learning for L2 learners, and usually EFL learners with good English proficiency are quite incompetent in the mastery of idioms (Luo Shiping, 2005). The number of studies on idiom acquisition, however, is limited, especially in China. Wu Xudong and Chen Bin (2006) investigated the comprehension of English color idioms by Chinese EFL learners. It revealed significant effects of color idiom types and English proficiency levels on idiom comprehension. To check the universality of the findings by Wu Xudong and Chen Bin, and deepen our understanding of English idiom acquisition, an empirical study was conducted in this dissertation to investigate the effects of various animal idiom types and that of two proficiency levels on animal idiom comprehension.Based on the different match of sameness/similarity and difference between surface linguistic forms and underlying cultural connotations, a contrastive model for English and Chinese animal idioms was built, each distinguishing four possible combinations. 30 high-level and 30 intermediate-level Chinese EFL learners were involved in this experimental study to discover how their comprehension of animal idioms was affected by different English proficiency levels and by four idiom types. Typeâ… are English animal idioms with the same/similar linguistic forms and cultural connotation as those of Chinese animal idioms; Typeâ…¡are English animal idioms with the same/similar cultural connotations but different linguistic forms from those of Chinese animal idioms; Typeâ…¢are English animal idioms with different cultural connotations but same/similar linguistic forms as those of Chinese idioms and Typeâ…£are English animal idioms with different cultural connotations and linguistic forms from those of Chinese idioms.The primary data consist of two parts: participants'performance on a Vocabulary Size Test to prove that the English vocabulary size of high-level learners in this study was significantly larger than that of the intermediate-level group, and participants'performance on a Test of English Animal Idioms Comprehension.Based on the results of the experiment, the study obtained three principal findings: (1) The effect of English animal idiom types on idiom comprehension is significant. Comparatively, Typeâ… was the easiest to comprehend because their transparency was the strongest; Typeâ…¢and Typeâ…£were the most difficult ones to comprehend because their transparency was the weakest; the transparency of Typeâ…¡was between the above types, so was the difficulty of comprehension.(2) The effect of English proficiency level on the comprehension of English animal idioms is significant, too. High-level EFL learners outperformed the intermediate-level group significantly in the comprehension of two animal idiom types (i.e. Typeâ… andâ…¡). However, high-level EFL learners did not show better understanding than that of the intermediate-level group in the comprehension of the other two animal idiom types (i.e. Typeâ…¢andâ…£).(3) During the comprehension of English animal idioms, transfer occurs. Influenced by positive language and cultural transfer, participants scored highest in the comprehension of Typeâ… . The surface linguistic forms of Typeâ…¡are different from those of Chinese expressions, so negative language transfer is likely to occur. That's why participants scored second highest in Typeâ…¡. Negative cultural transfer interferes in the comprehension of Typeâ…¢, and negative language and cultural transfer in Typeâ…£. So participants scored poorer compared with Typeâ… and Typeâ…¡.The possible causes for the above findings were discussed from the perspectives of second language learning and cultural transfer. Meanwhile, some suggestions for future English idiom teaching were put forward and limitations of the present study were also discussed.