DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n8p311

Processing and understanding this unique group of fixed expressions has been a topic of great importance for many scholars and language educators. The comprehension of an expression is a prerequisite for its acquisition. It deals with, among other things, how people learn to use them in their own language production. Using them in the proper context or situation is difficult in the native language (L1) and second language (L2) as well. There have been numerous studies on L1 and L2 comprehension and acquisition of these expressions but researchers have not come to an agreement about them. Different approaches suggest an L2 learner uses a variety of strategies (including guessing, using pragmatic knowledge, and experimentation) to decipher the meaning of an unknown expression. The problem addressed in this study is from the perspective of foreign language learners. Its purpose it to: 1) identify comprehension strategies used by intermediate level English language learners to understand the selected expressions in English and Albanian; 2) determine whether comprehension depends on the category of an expression (identical, similar, dissimilar to an expression in Albanian); and 3) discover their ability to use these expressions in different contexts. The results will be drawn from a questionnaire completed by EFL students.