대학생 학습자의 영어 관용어 이해 과정에서의 어려움

Abstract

Objectives Using the theoretical viewpoint of lexical transfer, this study investigates what causes Korean (L1) undergraduates’ difficulties in making sense of English (L2) idioms. Methods In order to achieve this research objective, ninety undergraduates in a metropolitan city area participated in a questionnaire-based study using four-type English idioms. The research participants translated twenty English idioms into Korean, which were selected by a Korean reference group depending on the perceived form and meaning similarity between L1 and L2. Then the participants listened to the explanations and answers on them and completed a questionnaire asking the most difficult idiom, the inference process of it, and what they realized about L2 idiom comprehension. Results There are three main findings. First, the idioms perceived the most difficult in translation were in the order of cognate idioms < pragmatic idioms < false friends idioms < L2-only idioms. This shows a tendency that the research participants had difficulty in understanding construal-opaque idioms including false friends idioms and L2-only idioms, whereas they did not have difficulty in understanding construal-transparent idioms including cognate idioms and pragmatic idioms. Second, when the participants did not perceive crosslinguistic meaning similarity on the construal-transparent idioms, they tended to make an arbitrary L1-based inference on them, resulting in translation errors. Third, crosslinguistic form difference could interact with crosslinguistic meaning similarity in the process of perceiving crosslinguistic similarity; nevertheless, the finding that they perceived more difficulty in understanding false friends idioms than pragmatic idioms signifies that the mechanism of lexical transfer is the perceived similarity of meaning between L1 and L2 idioms. Conclusions This study shows that construal opacity is the main cause of the research participants’ difficulties in understanding L2 idioms because their persistent meaning system is rooted in L1. This finding suggests that the popular teaching method of using inference strategy on L2 idiom comprehension is only valid for construal-transparent idioms as universal cognition operates on them, and that conscious effort to broaden L2 idiom repertoire is needed for construal-opaque idioms on which relative cognition operates. In the same vein, raising student consciousness on the crosslinguistic universals and linguistic relativity is also expected.