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โครงการรวบรวมและจัดทําวารสารอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์

2 and 3, the students could master them well, and they could master idioms in Reading

Comprehension Test 3 better than Reading Comprehension Test 2 because the level of
language was less diff cult

According to the students’ interviews, it appeared that contexts play more important
role than the linguistic features of idioms. 85% of students who were interviewed (selected

as representatives of those who earned high score (17-20 points), medium score (14-16
points), and low score (11-13 points)) stated that they understood the tested meanings of

idioms by employing the contexts to guess the meanings of the testing idioms. Additionally,
they reported that they could understand the meanings of the testing idioms in contexts

(especially in Reading Comprehension Test 3) better than in isolation. In addition, no one was
aware of the linguistic features of idioms to gain the answers to the questions. This indicates

the signif cant role of contexts and simple language in enhancing greatly on the students’
comprehension of the texts. As a consequence, to address the research question 3, idioms

do not seem to hinder the students’ comprehension when reading English editorial texts.

In addition, when considering the students’ scores, it can be seen that English-
major students could master the testing idioms better than non-major students due to the

fact that English-major students had more chances to be familiar with English language than
non-major students. In addition, students whose scores were high revealed that because

of their reading habits both Thai and English books, including doing activities involving
English language such as watching English movies or listening to English songs, helped them

master English. Interestingly, two students whose scores were high reported that although
they preferred to read Thai books, they could relate these experiences in English as well.

In sum, in reading English texts, a reader’s schema (Anderson, 2004) such as
exposure to the language and reader’s background knowledge of the text can enhance

overall reading comprehension and thus reduce diff culties in understanding problematic
parts of the texts such as idiomatic expressions. That is to say, a reader’s schema seems to

play a greater role in comprehension than the specif c linguistic features of certain idioms
(both semantically and grammatically).

วารสารมนุษยศาสตร์ ปีที่ 18 ฉบับที่ 1 พ.ศ. 2554 159