EFL Students’ Judgments of English Idiom Familiarity and Transparency

Abstract

This study investigates how L2 learners judge the familiarity and transparency of English idioms and whether these judgments would be associated with comprehension. It compares the performance of 90 undergraduate (Level 1 and Level 4) EFL students on tasks measuring idiom familiarity, transparency and comprehension. Results showed that the Level 4 students rated the idioms higher in familiarity and comprehended them with greater accuracy than Level 1 students did. However, students in the two groups performed similarly on the idiom transparency task.