Factors Influencing EFL Learners' Comprehension of Idiomatic Expressions in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies

Linguists have long discussed the comprehension of idioms because it is challenging for both native and non-native learners, particularly in literary discourse. Learning idioms is difficult for many students as their meaning is unpredictable, so they feel it is boring to know them. The current study aims to investigate the factors influencing EFL learners' comprehension in interpreting idiomatic expressions in William Goldings Lord of the Flies based on Lakoff and Johnsons (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The data were extracted from William Goldings novel Lord of the Flies. The participants were 10 Iraqi university EFL learners majoring in English; they were selected from fourth-year students at the University of Anbar, the College of Education for Humanities. The participants were asked in a questionnaire to state the difficulties of the idiomatic expressions in the extracts selected and to explain the factors influencing their understanding in the novel. The findings revealed that EFL learners faced difficulties in comprehending idiomatic expressions. They were affected by several external or internal factors in comprehending idiomatic expressions in the selected novel. It is concluded that varying levels of comprehension among the participants might be attributed and affected by some factors that may lead to non-understanding or misunderstanding. Some of these factors were Cultural knowledge, Interlanguage, Method of teaching, Vocabulary knowledge and Proficiency levels, The context, Theme, Figurative language, Literary knowledge.