IDIOM COMPREHENSION BY ROMANIAN STUDENTS. A CASE STUDY
Maria-Crina Herțeg
1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia, Romania
Abstract
The issue of Romanian students’ comprehension of idioms is addressed in this paper; that is, the students’ identification and processing of idiomatic expressions. The aim was not to study their production of idioms, or their use of idiomatic expressions in speech or writing.
A series of activities and tasks designed and implemented by the author were analysed; based on the findings, the author identified the strategies that Romanian students applied in order to determine the meanings of idioms. In addition, the factors involved in activating the students’ comprehension of idiomatic expressions, as well as their ability to differentiate between figurative and literal language, were identified. The categories of idioms that the students found difficult to process and those that were processed easily were identified and analysed.
The theoretical spine that links the approaches analysed in this research was proposed by Cacciari (1993).
Keywords: Idiomatic complexity; Figurative language; Comprehension; Processing strategies.
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How to cite this paper: Herțeg, M.-C. (2022). Idiom comprehension by Romanian students. A case study. Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education – JoLIE, 15(1), 39–60. https://doi.org/10.29302/jolie.2022.15.1.3
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