• Zorana Vasiljevic

  Author

The present study used error analysis to examine the strategies that foreign language learners
with dissimilar L1 use to interpret unfamiliar L2 idioms presented without contextual support. A
group of 23 low-intermediate Japanese university students were asked to guess the meaning of
30 English idioms. Twenty-seven of the phrases had semantically equivalent but lexically
different idiomatic counterparts in Japanese, and three phrases had multiple idiomatic
equivalents in Japanese, some of which were also compositionally identical to the target English
expressions. The results showed that learners use of a variety of interpreting strategies,
including compositional analysis of the phrases, cross-linguistic transfer, as well as the
activation of conceptual and cultural knowledge. Over-focus on one compositional element of
the phrase was identified as the main source of error in L2 idiom comprehension. Crosslinguistic
influence was observed, but the transfer was not automatic, even when L1 and L2 pairs
shared semantic and lexical properties.

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