IDIOM LEARNING STRATEGIES OF ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Abstract

The study is conducted in light of increasing emphasis on the practice of idiom learning and teaching worldwide. It aims to explore idiom learning strategies adopted by second-year students at the Faculty of English Language Teachers Education, the difference in strategy types between those with high and low idiomatic competence and the factors affecting their strategy choice. The study involves 94 second-year mainstream students majoring in English, with the adoption of multiple research methods ranging from a written likert-typed idiom learning strategy questionnaire, an idiom test and semi-structured interviews. Results from the study show that the participants have made use of various strategies to learn idioms, with using monoligual dictionary, asking teachers and guessing from the context being the most frequently used strategies to discover the meaning of new idioms. When consolidating knoweldge about idioms, participants tend to endorse strategies in meta-cognitive and memory groups. Meanwhile, there has been a marked distinction in strategy use between learners who obtain low and high scores in the idiom test. While the former gravitate towards such strategies as guessing meaning based on context, using mono-lingual dictionary, interacting with friends, associating with personal experience, grouping, taking idiom test, and continuing to study over time, the latter prefer checking cognates, using bilingual dictionary, written repetition and flashcards. Moreover, learners’ choice of idiom learning strategies are reported to be closely relevant to their belief, learning experience, style, motivation, their affective states and daily habit. These findings are expected to help teachers to provide students with more useful strategy recommendation and make more informed choice of idiom teaching strategies which well correlate with students’ learning approaches.