Comprehension Of Englsih Idioms By Chinese EFL Learners In Reading

The purpose of this study was to find out how Chinese EFL learnerscomprehend idioms in reading and how idiom types affect the strategy use in theprocess of comprehension. Thirty nine sophomores of non-English majors from auniversity in northwest China were chosen as subjects to participate in acomprehension test and a think-aloud task in which they were required to verbalize theprocess of how they arrived at the comprehension of each idiom. To ensure thereliability of the comprehension test, a pilot study was administered in another parallelclass. The data obtained from the think-aloud task were transcripted and analyzedafterwards. Based on previous studies on idiom comprehension, idioms wereorganized into four categories: ET (exact translation) idioms, PT (partial translation)idioms, NET (non-equivalent translation) idioms and FF (false friend) idioms. Elevenstrategies were identified and eight effective strategies were spotted from datacollected by think-aloud as well as by taking into consideration the strategies inprevious L2idiom comprehension studies. Among all the strategies, making semanticinferences from context was considered the most frequently used and the mosteffective strategy. As for the influence of idiom types on idiom comprehension, it wasconfirmed that the strategy use differed with the different types of idioms. ET idiomswere the easiest to understand followed by PT idioms, NET idioms and FF idioms.The strategy of referring to subjects’ L1was frequently and effectively used when itcomes to the comprehension of ET idioms. While with regard to NET idioms, nostrategy related to L1knowledge was found. Based on the above findings, somepedagogical implications were provided. Limitations of the current study andsuggestions for future research were also presented.