5.2 Limitations and Future Expectations 15

References 16

1. Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Idioms, as the important component of linguistic system, are widely applied in daily use of language. Based on analysis of non-literal meanings in political debates, textbook of psychology, novels and psychotherapy and counseling, Pollio et al. (1977:140) estimates that most of English native speakers use 10 million newly-created metaphors and 20 million idioms in their entire lives; and about 3,000 newly-created metaphors and 7,000 idioms averagely in each week. Hoffman (1984) makes similar estimation. 

While numerous studies have explored the comprehension of idioms by monolingual language users, surprisingly little psycholinguistic research has been undertaken into the acquisition and processing of idiomatic expressions by second language learners. In China, English is a compulsory course for students to learn since primary school. Most parents think that if their children learn English well, they can be more competitive in the society. However, many language learners realize when they set out to learn a new language, they are faced with a truly Herculean task, because it is not just the language they are going to learn, but also the immense world of conceptual and cultural ideas which they need to know in order to get as close as possible to a native speaker’s level and use the language correctly and fluently. A native speaker does not often totally recognize that he/she is using idioms; a non-native learner aims to make the correct use of idioms, but most of the time it turns out that some idioms used in an illogical or grammatically anomalous way. The universal and frequent use of idioms has become one of the linguistic phenomena that bother linguistic learners. In the recent years, research on the “in-depth” of vocabulary knowledge of English learners in China (Wu Xudong, Chen Xiaoqing, 2000) has shown that among all types of vocabulary knowledge, the speed of collocation (idiom is one type of it) acquisition is the slowest with the worst effect. Moreover, most of the time, the understanding or the implication of an idiom in a passage will be asked in a variety of English tests, and a majority of Chinese students tend to lose the point (Huang Lihui 2004). Therefore, it’s quite innovative and necessary to explore the factors that influence the comprehension of L2 idioms.

1.2 Aims and Significance of the Study

Although the existing research has disclosed certain characteristics of L2 idiom comprehension, due to the small amount and narrow range, there are many of related factors not included in the research on L2 idiom comprehension, which are summarized as the following two aspects: 

(1) Though many of idioms contain metaphors and cultural aspects related to learners’ native languages, the influence of cross-linguistic on idiom comprehension is neglected, and only Charteris-Black (2002) has considered this factor. There is a necessity to further investigate the influence of the two factors on Chinese learners’ comprehension of English idioms.  

(2) Despite that several scholars have been early enough to realize that metaphorical competence (namely the competence of comprehending and outputting metaphors including idioms) is an important component of comprehensive linguistic capability (Danesi, 1986; Low, 1988, quoted from Littlemore, 2001), the role of the participants’ overall L2 proficiency has been paid little attention during the process of idiom comprehension. And there is no research involving it into design project as an investigation variable.

This study aims at finding the influence of the idiom types and L2 proficiency on L2 comprehension by constructing the cross-conceptual and cross-cultural English and Chinese idiom comparison and classification frameworks so that L2 learners’ awareness of an appropriate understanding of English idioms during the process of language learning would be raised and some pragmatic approaches would be provided to English teachers to better foster students’ L2 comprehension competence.