LEI students’ experiences about the use of idioms when interacting with native american speakers at a summer camp

Abstract

“This thesis reports on a qualitative study. This study was carried out at a Public Mexican University in a department for teaching languages. The primary aims of this study were to explore if LEI students know and understand English Idioms, to analyze the use of idioms in different situations in a summer camp and to explore LEI students’ experiences, difficulties, problems and strategies they used to overcome those problems when interacting with Native American speakers. Fifteen students were interviewed to collect the data. The interview included nine questions and was carried out in Spanish to obtain better results. The answers of each student were recorded and the extracts used were taken from the fifteen transcripts. The research findings revealed that students had an idea about the use of idioms in different conversations in their native language but they had problems to understand idioms in English. LEI students’ knowledge of idioms in English was very poor; they were not sure about the real meaning of them because they did not many before being in the USA. Moreover, while encountering the meaning of idiomatic expression given in a context, the participants used a variety of strategies to have a good comprehension of Idioms.”