The Impact of Pictorial Cues on Understanding Idioms Among Arab EFL Learners

Abstract

Idioms vary extensively in their difficulty, especially for foreign language learners. English Foreign Language (EFL) learners often find transparent idioms, such as break someone’s heart, which means to make someone feel deep sadness, more straightforward. Whereas, they may find kicking the bucket ‘to die’ somehow opaque and challenging. The study investigates the extent to which Arabic speakers of English find contextual and pictorial cues embedded in social media platforms beneficial for understanding idioms and the methods they often use to comprehend idioms. Thirty female Arabic-speaking learners of English at a high school in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia participated in this study. The study used a three-version design to assess the participants’ understanding of idioms through a multiple-choice interpretation task. The participants were divided into three groups and received the same amount (n = 24) and type of idioms in three different methods: contextualization (i.e., participants were exposed to idioms in context), decontextualization (i.e., participants were exposed to idioms out of context) and the third group was exposed to pictorial-cued idioms. The findings revealed that visualisation was the most effective method for mastering idioms rather than contextualisation. On the other hand, decontextualisation was the least effective method. The study concludes with specific reference to some pedagogical implications.