Interpreting idioms in a second language

Abstract

How do people understand figurative speech in a foreign language? What strategies do they use? By means of an online questionnaire, this study investigated to what extent contextual information and transfer play a role in the interpretation of idioms in a second language, controlling for familiarity. Sixty-one native speakers of Dutch were asked to guess the correct interpretation of English idioms with and without a Dutch equivalent, presented with and without context, out of four answer options. The results showed that correctly interpreting an idiom depends on both the presence of context and the possibility of transfer. More correct interpretations were given when an idiom was presented in a context, but only for English idioms without an equivalent in the native language. English idioms with an equivalent in Dutch, often rated as familiar, were mostly understood correctly. We interpret this result as the involvement of transfer from the native language.

The use of pictorial devices to improve english idioms elucidation among efl seventh-grade students

“…Although it is recommended to emphasize strategical teaching of idioms in EFL classrooms, teachers should pay more attention to idioms in L2 that do not have an equivalent in L1 and vice versa (Cucchiarini et al, 2020) since they represent an extra level of challenge for EFL students. Although idioms are often non-transparent (van Dijk et al, 2022), that is, their meaning is not equivalent to their direct translation, imageability (mental graphical representation) facilitates idioms comprehension (Senaldi & Titone, 2022), despite their non-transparent nature. Thus, we conclude pictorial representation of idioms counters one of the main difficulties EFL students face in their correct interpretation.…”