Strategies and Difficulties of Learning English Idioms Among University Students

Abstract

This study investigated the strategies and difficulties of learning English idioms among university students. The sample consisted of one hundred and twenty-nine students enrolled in the second semester of the academic year 2020/2021. The researcher prepared a question­naire to identify the strategies employed by students to facilitate learning idioms and to explore the difficulties that faced them during their learning. The results showed that the  participants had difficulty to learn idioms. They also revealed that the most common used strategies were predicting the meaning of the idioms, translating them to the first language, guessing the meaning of idiomatic expressions from the context, depending on verbal and visual information, and looking up unfamiliar idioms in the dictionary. The researcher gave some pedagogical implications and recommendations about learning idioms for further studies.

Keywords: Idiomatic expressions, figurative meaning, learning strategies, learning difficulties, innovative learning strategies

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-23-10

Publication date:August 31^st 2021