Abstract:

Idioms are said to mirror the culture of the language. As it happens with most culturally-determined language aspects, idioms pose great difficulties for learners (Prodromou 2003; Tran, 2012; Vasiljevic, 2011), to the point where some teachers avoid dealing with idioms in the classroom altogether (Tran, 2012). Prodromou (2003) speaks of an “idiomatic paradox”, where native speakers rely on idioms in spoken discourse, while even advanced learners struggle, finding them elusive. However, many scholars insist on teaching idioms in an EFL classroom. Celce-Murcia (2008) proposes a communicative competence model, where one of the competences (figurative) rests on the ability to use idioms. CEFR includes idiomatic expressions in its band descriptions (Council of Europe 2012). All this makes a case for including idioms in academic syllabi.

The paper explores the reasons why idioms present immense difficulties for learners. I start by reviewing existing scholarly approaches to definitions and taxonomy of idiomatic expressions and proceed to identifying the common issues that EFL learners face. I then outline suggestions to deal with those issues. The latter are based on successful case studies from teaching idioms in EFL classroom to L1 Russian and Turkish speakers.

References:
[1] Prodromou, L. (2003) Idiomaticity and the non-native speaker. English Today, 19 (2), 42-48.
[2] Tran, H. Q. (2012) An explorative study of idiom teaching for pre-service teachers of English, English Language Teaching, 5 (12), 76-86.
[3] Vasiljevic, Z (2011) Using conceptual metaphors and L1 definitions in teaching idioms to non native speakers, The Journal of Asia TEFL, 8 (3), 135-160.
[4] Celce-Murcia, M. (2008) Rethinking the role of communicative competence in language teaching. In E. Alcón Soler & P. Safont Jordà (Eds.), Intercultural language use and language learning. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
[5] Council of Europe. (2012) The common European framework in its political and educational context viewed at http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Framework_en.pdf 15/07/2019

Keywords:

English as a Foreign Language, English as a Second language, teaching lexis, idioms.