The Relationship between Reading Comprehension and Figurative Competence in L2 Learners

Abstract

Though many L2 studies have explored the development of figurative language competence (e.g., Cain, Oakhill, & Lemmon, 2005; Li, 2010), few studies have examined the relationship between idiom comprehension and L2 learners’ reading comprehension in consonance with their proficiency levels. This study aimed at assessing the relationship between comprehending opaque and transparent idioms and L2 learners’ ability to comprehend a text. It was hypothesized that an L2 learner’s proficiency level and figurative competence were interwoven. To do so, 49 Iranian senior B.A. students of English were divided into 2 groups of skilled and less-skilled reading comprehenders in line with the results of a TOEFL test. They were presented with 30 short texts, ending with idiom fragments (e.g., Paul broke the . . . for the idiom to break the ice) and asked to select the appropriate words from among the 3 options: idiomatic, literal, and figurative. Later, the same texts were given to 185 freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors to cross-examine their figurative competence. Results revealed that the skilled readers were superior to the less-skilled ones in comprehending both the opaque (F = 25.107, df = 48, α = 0.05, p = 0.00) and the transparent idioms (F = 23.313, df = 48, α = 0.05, p = 0.00). Also, from among the 4 university levels, the seniors’ performance differed greatly from that of the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, who did all approximately the same on the idiom test (F = 38.909, df = 184, α = 0.05, p = 0.00). Findings may contribute to exploring the process of idiom understanding by demonstrating a link between idiom comprehension and text comprehension. Thus, the growth of one might affect the progress of the other.