The acquisition of English body idiomatic expressions by Arab EFL learners

Abstract EN

This paper aims at examining the comprehension and the production of body idiomatic expressions by Arab learners.

To this end, two tests one focusing on receptive skills and the other on productive ones – were distributed to the sample of the study which consisted of two independent groups in order to assess the role of proficiency level in acquiring these idioms.

Group A consisted of fifteen Arab second year students in the M.A.

program in Linguistics at the University of Jordan.

Group B consisted of fifteen Arab third year students enrolled in the B.A English Language and literature Program at the University of Jordan.

The study also investigates which idiom-type(s) and test(s) cause the biggest problem to Arab learners.

It was shown that L2 learners made more errors in the idiom-production test than in comprehension-based one.

And it seems that different idioms cause a problem for the Arab learners of English.

The findings of the study suggest that Arab learners of English tend to understand the meaning of L2 body idiomatic expressions but are unable to use them in their own language production.

The study suggests that both group A and group B students were far better at comprehending an idiom’s meaning than learning to use them in their own language production.

The performance of group A in producing and comprehending these idioms was much better than the performance of group B in producing and comprehending them.

This may indicate that age and level of education (BA vs MA) may affect the linguistic proficiency of learners.

However, such correlation needs further investigation.