A Study of University Students' Idiomatic Competence

Abstract

There is no doubt that formulaic expressions such as collocations, idioms and compounds play an important role in the second language acquisition and their teaching should be an integral part of foreign language learning since they show insights into foreign language culture and promote fluency, proficiency and communicative competence. That is the reason why idioms present an integral part of the English language curriculum at the Faculty of Food Technology and students are taught idioms related to food. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to establish whether the students are familiar with the food idioms prior to teaching them in order to incorporate them into the curriculum. The assumption is that most of the idioms are not intelligible to students since it is impossible to guess their meaning by anlaysing their individual components. However, due to the fact that the subjects were the 1st year graduate students who have been learning English for 15 years, this research will reveal whether there are students who are almost proficient users of English since they are familiar with most of the idioms. These results will, then, be of great importance when revising and designing the teaching materials intended for the students of food technology.