A Study On The Mental Process Of Idioms In Chinese EFL Learners

Idioms have attracted great attention over the last several decades,for they are believed to possess such a distinct feature as ambiguity.Many idioms can be interpreted either literally or non-literally,in other words,the contributions of the constituent words’ literal meanings to the figurative interpretations of idioms.Previous studies have been conducted on the mental process of idioms by means of different tasks.Some researchers have used an eye-movement paradigm to trace native speakers and non-native speakers’ reaction time of idioms in the passages;some have used online grammar judgment tasks to investigate the reaction time of formulaic sequences and non-formulaic sequences.However,most previous researches have studied native speakers’ mental process of idioms,few previous ones have studied that of foreign language learners.This study aims at exploring the mental process of idioms in Chinese EFL learners.Two main research questions addressed in this study are as follows:(1)Are there any differences of the mental process between the idioms and non-idiomatic sequences in Chinese EFL learners? If yes,what are the differences?(2)Are there any differences of the mental process between the figurative meaning and the literal meaning of the idioms in Chinese EFL learners? If yes,what are the differences?The subjects of this study were thirty MA students of English from a comprehensive university in Jiangsu Province.Twenty paragraphs with sixty target words were carefully selected.This study involved a self-paced reading task by E-Prime Software.The major findings are summarized as follows.Firstly,there are significant differences of the mental process between the idioms and non-idiomatic sequences.That is,idiomatic interpretations are read more quickly than control phrases for Chinese EFL learners.As a matter of fact,this finding shows a significant processing advantage for the idioms over non-idiomatic sequences.Secondly,there are no significant differences between literal meanings of the idioms and figurative meanings of the idioms.That is,the idioms in contexts supporting their idiomatic interpretation are not read more quickly or slowly than those in contexts supporting their literal interpretation for Chinese EFL learners.The findings of this study would shed light on our English idioms learning and teaching,idiomatic expressions may deserve special attention in the classroom instruction and English language learning.