The article deals with the issues based on analyzing the major linguistic, cognitive, cultural, and pedagogical difficulties encountered by EFL learners in developing idiomatic competence. Most learners can explain a grammar rule more confidently than they can use let the cat out of the bag at the right moment. Idiomatic competence—the ability to notice, interpret, and produce conventional figurative phrases in ways that sound natural to proficient speakers—lags behind other parts of language study, even among students who score well on exams. This article looks at why that gap is so persistent. Idioms are not a single problem. Some are hard to spot, some are hard to interpret, some are easy to understand on the page and still clumsy in speech, and many are socially risky: the phrase is known, the situation is not. The discussion argues that textbooks often sell meaning and hide use; that first-language idiom systems both help and interfere; and that fear of sounding ridiculous keeps many competent students silent. So, idioms will not become easy, but they become teachable once we stop treating them as decorative extras and start teaching noticing, restriction of form, and social fit as parts of the same competence.
Difficulties in Acquiring Idiomatic Competence in A Foreign Language
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References
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