An Empirical Study on Chinese EFL Learners’ Processing of English Animal Idioms

Abstract

The present article reports on the effect of various animal idiom types and that of both proficiency levels on animal idiom comprehension. Based on the different match of equivalence/similarity and difference between surface linguistic forms and their underlying cultural connotations, a contrastive model for English and Chinese animal idioms is built, each distinguishing four possible combinations. Results of participants' performance on an English animal idioms comprehension test revealed that (a) The effects of English animal idiom types on idiom interpretation are significant. (b) The effects of English proficiency level on the comprehension of English animal idioms are significant, too. (c) During the processing of English animal idioms, L2 proficiency level and animal idiom types interact with each other and the interaction reached the level of significance.