An Experimental Research On Foreign Students’ Acquisition And Cognition On The Chinese Idioms

This research is based on the cognitive experimental research, and targets foreign students withmedium or advanced levels of Chinese as its subjects. Employing assessment tasks, correctiontasks and multi-selection tasks, this research has systematically examined the characteristics ofthe acquisition and cognition in the word-form, grammatical function and semantics of theChinese Idioms of foreign students with various Chinese levels, revealed the regular pattern ofthe cognitive processing of Chinese Idioms and the dynamic developmental mechanism.The result shows that:1. There are some differences among foreign students’ identification and output on the variouserrors of the Chinese Idioms. Specifically, as for the difficulty of the word-form identification,coinage≈order-reversing<synonym≈similarity in form<similarity in pronunciation; as for thedifficulty of the word-form output, order-reversing≈similarity in form<synonym≈similarity inpronunciation≈coinage. foreign students’ abilities in the word-form identification and output ofthe Idioms develop as their Chinese levels heighten.2. There are some differences among foreign students’ identification and output on the variousgrammatical functions of the Idioms.Specifically,as for the difficulty of the grammatical functionidentification, language nature errors≈object errors <decoration errors of adverbs ofdegree≈syntax composition errors; as for the difficulty of the grammatical function output,adverbs of degree≈language nature <objects<syntax composition.foreign students’ abilities inthe grammatical function identification and output of the set phrases develop as their Chineselevels heighten.3. Sentence context helps in medium-level foreign students’ semantic acquisition of setphrases,character context≈inference context>no context; there are some differences amongmedium-level foreign students’ acquisition abilities towards various semantic types of Idioms，literal meaning>figurative meaning≈extended meaning; Chinese backgrounds will promotemedium-level foreign students’ acquisition of the various types of set phrase semantics; as for theset phrase semantic acquisition in various contexts, there are some differences betweenmedium-level foreign students with or without Chinese backgrounds.Based on above-mentioned results, this research has in the end provided some targetedsuggestions for the education strategy of the Idioms, as well as the compilation of the Idiomsdictionaries and textbooks.