An Empirical Study of Role of Linguistic Contexts in Acquisition of English Idioms by Chinese EFL Learners

Many EFL learners can understand the meaning of an individual word, but they often failed to comprehend the whole sentence. On the basis of Nation's theory of context, the researcher conducted idiom tests and questionnaire to the subjects from Lanzhou City University, and found that the correct understanding rate of English idioms without context is lower than 50%, while the correct rate promotes dramatically if the English idioms are offered with context. It confirmed that linguistic context plays a positive role in the understanding of English idioms by Chinese EFL learners, and thus teachers should direct students to pay enough attention to the role contexts play in idiom understanding.