Processing of American Idioms by Native Speakers of Brazilian Portuguese: A Study Based on the Heuristic Model of T.J. Cooper

The primary research question addressed in this study is, how do native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese process American English idioms? The author adapted a previous study by Thomas C. Cooper (1999), employing the think-aloud method: informants were asked to verbalize their thoughts as they resolved the meanings of the idioms, as presented in the Idiom Recognition Test (IRT). In contrast to Cooper’s 1999 study, the author questioned informants of a single L1 group; native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The results showed that the native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese experienced less difficulty than the 1999 group understanding the same idioms. They also employed the same strategies but in different proportions