Idiom understanding in preadolescents: Synergy in action

The present study was designed to examine how preadolescents gain an unders tanding of idioms. In particular, it examined the role of idiom familiarity in conjunction with students' language-based academic abilities. The parti cipants were 50 children (mean age 12 years 4 months) who attended a primar y school in Christchurch, New Zealand. All students spoke standard New Zeal and English and were considered by the school to be progressing normally. T he results indicated that idiom understanding was closely associated with s tudents' familiarity with idioms and with their skills in reading and liste ning comprehension. Moreover, students who were good comprehenders of idiom s outperformed their classmates who were poor comprehenders on all associat ed measures: idiom familiarity, reading comprehension, and listening compre hension. Guidelines for instruction in idiom understanding are offered for speech-language pathologists who work collaboratively with teachers in the regular classroom during language arts activities. The guidelines reflect t he position that multiple factors, working in synergy, promote the understa nding of idioms in youth.