Figurative competence refers to the ability to understand and interpret figurative speech – in other words, utterances such as metaphors and metonymy, which are cases in which we use certain words to express something different from what we literally said. These expressions serve as ways to say ordinary things in extraordinary ways, which have to be properly used by speakers (or writers) and properly decoded by listeners (or readers) in order to have the desired effect. As students get better at English, it is natural that they would desire to master the language in-depth. Figurative speech has sometimes been disregarded as more related to art than “normal” speech, but cognitive linguists who have written about it refer to it as an essential part of language mastery. Additionally, there are many ways in which figurative language shapes our thoughts and actions, which is all the more reason for learners of a foreign language to get acquainted with the way its figurative speech works. There have been numerous studies that have found that L2 learners somewhat lack in figurative comprehension skills, citing reasons such as unfamiliarity, but some research has indicated that students do not see the value in figurative speech. Assuming that most students majoring in English at the University of Osijek will most likely take up the roles of teachers (who should serve as language models for their students) and translators (who need to know how to translate figurative language) in the future, it is to be expected that they will wish to develop their language skills as much as possible, which requires incorporating figurative comprehension into their repertoire. The study presented in this paper has served to compare the figurative comprehension levels of 1st and 3rd year students of English at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, concluding that there isn’t an extreme difference in ability, although 3rd year students did perform slightly better on average. The reasons for such results are given in the Discussion section. The study has found that the students value figurative competence as a skill for both teachers and translators, as well as everyday speakers, but tend to overestimate their own level of familiarity with such expressions.