Investigating Cross-linguistic Influence on EFL Students’ Comprehension and Production of L2 Idioms

Sulaiman Alnujaidi

Abstract


Cross-linguistic influence (CLI) plays a pivotal role in second language acquisition, particularly in the acquisition, comprehension, and production of idiomatic expressions. This study aimed at investigating the influence of cross-linguistic similarities and differences on the receptive and productive knowledge of idioms among Arab EFL students. A total of 32 Arabic-speaking, college-level EFL students were introduced to 60 idioms categorized into three groups (1) L1-L2 Same idioms; (2) L1-L2 Different idioms; and (3) L2 Only idioms. The participants were pre- and post-tested to examine the influence of cross-linguistic variations on their receptive and productive knowledge of idiomatic expressions. Two separate one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedures were conducted to find out whether there were any significant differences among the participants in the comprehension and production of the three types of idioms. The two ANOVA analyses yielded statistically significant differences between the three idiom groups regarding the participants’ receptive and productive knowledge. These results suggest that participants exhibited significantly greater comprehension and production with L1-L2 Same idioms but faced more challenges with L1-L2 Different idioms. Additionally, participants demonstrated significantly more comprehension and production with L2 Only idioms than with L1-L2 Different idioms. These findings can have practical implications for EFL learners, teachers, and materials developers, and theoretical implications for EFL researchers.


Keywords


English as a foreign language (EFL); First language (L1); Second language (L2); Second language acquisition (SLA); Cross-linguistic influence (CLI); Language transfer (LT)

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/13214

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