Page 165 -

โครงการรวบรวมและจัดทําวารสารอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์

completing this task, 20 students were selected as representatives to gain their self-reports

on how they mastered the testing idioms and their diff culty when doing the three reading
comprehension tests. The reports from the questionnaire, the three reading comprehension

test scores, and their reports from the interviews about their perceptions on their reading
comprehension abilities were triangulated to address this enquiry.

Lastly, the f ndings for the research questions 1 and 2 led to explanations in
response to the research question 3 “ Are idiomatic expressions hindering factors for these

Thai readers in their comprehension of English editorial texts?”

Discussion of Findings

This part presents the f ndings to address the three research questions of this study.
The results of this study were divided into two parts: the f rst part addresses the f rst research

question “What are the common linguistic types of English idioms used in the editorial
columns?” in connection with part of research question 2 regarding the students’ abilities in

understanding idioms. The second part presents f ndings for the research questions 2 “What
are Thai readers’ abilities and perceptions in their comprehension of the English idioms

appearing in the editorials in the English newspapers?” in connection with the research
question 3 “ Are the idiomatic expressions hindering factors for these Thai readers in their

comprehension of English editorial texts?”

Under this study, there were f ve types of topics appearing in the editorial columns.

These topics included discussions on general issues, domestic political situations, domestic
economic situations, foreign affairs, and legal issues. Idioms appearing in the editorial

columns were both function words and content words. According to the students’ reports,
they normally comprehended most of the content words from the contexts.

Regarding the types of idioms, the two theoretical frameworks (Fernando, 1996;

Makkai, 1972) were employed. The f ndings revealed that most of the idioms found in this
study in any type of topic are literal idioms (43% e.g., f rst of all, day off, in mind, and no

matter what), followed by semi-idioms (33% e.g., on the surface, save face, common ground,
and face to face) and pure idioms (24% e.g., lion’s share, paper tiger, red tape, and f ying

วารสารมนุษยศาสตร์ ปีที่ 18 ฉบับที่ 1 พ.ศ. 2554 157