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โครงการรวบรวมและจัดทําวารสารอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์

In these days of globalization, Thai readers including college students seek more

opportunities to read English texts in different platforms of media including newspapers.
However, due to unsuccessful instruction of English reading in Thailand, reading skills of Thai

learners including college students need to be improved (Na Pan, 1979; Philondee, 2005;
Prungwanitpong, 2008; Wongsothorn, 1988). Especially, because of the globalized world,

readers need to utilize their reading skills to consume information from various sources of
information. As aforementioned, one prominent source is the newspaper. Also, every newspaper

has an editorial, an important column in which the publisher’s views are conveyed to the
public. The newspaper language, however, has its stereotypes. Its language is precise and

concise because of the space limitation (Hodgson, 1993; Keeble, 1994). There are several
techniques to make news, or features interesting and attract readers. Among these linguistic

techniques, idioms are commonly employed.

An idiom is an expression whose meaning is not immediately derivable from the

individual words of which it is constituted (Perce, 2007: 87). The most important feature
of an idiom is its unique meaning. However, some of them cause a diff culty for the

learners of English or non-native speakers because many idioms have cultural or historical
backgrounds without connection with the original meaning of individual words. However,

students should master idiomatic English because, as Prodromou (2003) stated, they will not
achieve idiomatic f uency when they have not been exposed to the texts in authentically

communicative contexts.

In Thailand, Thai students have studied English for several years, but they have
paid more attention on grammatical structures. Unfortunately, they seem to have low

comprehension of reading texts especially when idiomatic expressions are presented (Palikupt,
1977). Therefore, in order to gain better understanding of how English idioms play roles in Thai

readers’ English reading comprehension, especially those that appear in the two prominent
English newspapers available in Thailand, this study aimed to examine 1) the common

linguistic types of English idioms used in the editorial columns 2) Thai readers’ abilities and
perceptions in their comprehension of English idioms and 3) whether idiomatic expressions

are the hindering factors for Thai readers in their comprehension of English editorial texts.

152 วารสารมนุษยศาสตร์ ปีที่ 18 ฉบับที่ 1 พ.ศ. 2554