Investigating EFL Learners’ Strategies to Understand English Idiomatic Expressions. The Case of Master One Students of English at Biskra University.

Abstract

Idioms and idiomatic language are some of the most interesting and creative vocabulary terms to learn in any language; they are an integral part of the English language, in particular. Idioms are often used by almost all native speakers to express different meanings in various situations. Hence, it remains a challenge for non-native speakers to understand idioms. This may create a big obstacle in communication and interaction in English. However, EFL learners can referto a verity of methods and strategies in order to understand English idioms and idiomatic expressions. Indeed, they can rely on translation, guessing the meaning, or finding an equivalent of them in their mother tongue. Therefore, this research aims to explore what strategy EFL students use so as to find the exact meaning of the idiom and achieve its understanding. Hence, this study has undertaken an exploratory study and focused on master one students of English at Biskra University (N°= 40) to be the case study. The objective was to see how familiar students are with English idioms and what strategy they use to understand them. Accordingly, this research was built on the assumption that considering context, being familiar of the mother tongue‟s cultural and historical idioms as well as using translation are all strategies essential in facilitating the process of comprehending idioms. The researcher opted for a mixed-method approach in which two data gathering tools were used: a semi-structured questionnaire and an idiom quiz. The data analysis showed that the majority of students are familiar with using idioms. In addition, students revealed (through the quiz) to adopt various strategies to understand idioms: Guessing the meaning through context was the most used one then comes finding an equivalent in their mother tongue and, lastly, making direct translations. In short, the results came along with the suggested assumption and, therefore, achieved the intended objectives of this study