CENTRO UNIVERSITÁRIO IBERO-AMERICANO

1. Introduction.

This paper tries, briefly, to understand the importance of teaching idiomaticity to ESL students. Why is it so important and what are the difficulties about the subject? Always having as support some articles read in classroom, books and discussions made in class.

2. Developing

It's a fact that even those dedicated students have difficulties trying to understand real life conversation. They studied for years and Language institutes, have a fluent English, perfect grammar but, even though, when they go out there and have real experience in other country, they have the feeling they know nothing about the Language they've been studying for years.

The answer to this dilemma is that all students learn English, but they don't LIVE the language. Language is much more than someone can put in a book. Or in a movie... Language is alive, constantly changing; it's rich, and has peculiar details that just who truly lives it can produce with naturalness.

In the past, during the 1960s and 70s, English was taught just with grammar books, and a perfect grammar understanding would make a student an expert on the subject. Nowadays we know that there are much more to learn and, many schools base their methods in the Communicative Approach, trying to teach their learners what is really used in everyday conversations (realia). Teachers everywhere look for materials such as magazines, videos, shows, internet to get in contact with what is really happening out there. They work hard to make a classroom environment similar to what students will face out there. Sometimes is not enough... language is not static; it changes from county to country, state to state, people to people.

All this peculiarities of a Language has a name, IDIOMACITICY. Stanislav Kavka (1999) says that the name has the origin from the word IDIOM that, to sum up, is "the form of speech peculiar or proper to a people or country". So, it is the way, the expressions used by people in determined areas... It's a clear explanation, logical and simple. Idioms don't follow rules, they are mass creation, and they don't have logic or strategies.

A good example would be an usual "good morning". Brazilian students tend to translate all the words, and many times, this is not possible, due to use of idioms and collocation. In Portuguese we use a "bom dia!" and if we try to translate it we have: "good day", it will sound grammatically correct, but, however, it is not what people say;

A simple example like this makes easier for anyone to understand how important is to teach Idioms in the classroom. But how?

3. Teaching

Some idioms are easy to use, and are vastly explained in course books. They are easy to understand and are frequently presented in chunks during grammar explanations. These expressions are very important, because are used many times, hardly ever can be replaced and they add to the speech certain fluency. When used appropriately the learner will sound fluent. They should be taught as a block (chunk), as an only word that cannot be divided.

Many course books present it this way. E.g.:

• How old are you? / What is he-she like?
• Thank you! / You are welcome!
• What's up? / How's it going?

These are common expressions, found easily in course books today. They are very important and if you divide them, they don't give the main idea that they suppose to mean.

Another important thing to point out is that these "chunks" not only have to be together to represent the idea, but they have to be pronounced as a chunk too. So, in my opinion idioms should be taught firstly orally, practiced student-student, then student-teacher, after that presented as written block. When teaching idioms the pronunciation is also important. There is rhythm and it has to be taken in consideration, especially if fluency is the aim.

Another problem to point out here is where to get in contact with everyday expression that contain idioms and are also natural? I would say the best place is on TV. I rather use talk shows or reality show, where there are not scripts to be follow and during an interview people tend to use everyday vocabulary, when in a soap opera they have recorded and chosen the best words, it's not natural or a free choice of vocabulary. As O'keeffe, McCarthy and Carter (2007) say, idioms even when pronounced correctly, sound strange when spoken by a non native speaker. So we should be careful when teaching, stick to the basics and more functional ones. Those that are really necessary to make themselves understood.

Teachers must always encourage students to connect idioms with their own experiences (Bergstrom 1979 quoted in O'keeffe, McCarthy and Carter (2007)) or any kind of personalization is welcome, and a good idea memorizing and connecting the topic to the reality.

When taught to a native speaker, these idioms are not presented with its appropriated use; they are learned through the years, by living situation, from people to people, not necessarily in a classroom. Here is the problem; often we tend to present some sentences and contexts in one hour classroom, when they are actually absorbed during years of practice by an American, for example.

For the other idioms, students need to know, at least, their meaning or context, thus they can understand better a conversation, and establish a comprehensible communication.

Idioms and collocation are now clearly better presented when using a context, (when and why, should I say such a thing). Teachers should then avoid translation, and offer instead a situation to where to use a sentence. The context has to be passed to the learner. Better than understand what is the translation of each word is he must know when to use.

Below is an example of a way of introducing an idiom in class:

Teacher:- To ask about age, what sentence should we use? (Teacher points a sentence)

Student:- "How old are you?"

Not:

T:- How do I say: "Quantos anos você tem?"

S:- "What is your age?" (They are translating)

Paying attention to the questions we make, we can assure a situation understanding, and avoid that students will connect the sentence to its translation not its meaning.

O'keeffe, McCarthy and Carter also say that to reproduce in the classroom the context in which idioms tend to appear is more motivating for students than if we simply present a list of items to them.

4. Conclusion

Of course language is not an exact science; there are many ways to say the same sentence, using different expressions. However the proper use of some sort of idioms is what distinguish a native speaker from a foreigner. An American knows what has been used in the past years. A student of the language (even the most dedicated one) knows what is in the book, web sites, TV shows...

Incorporating context in the classroom we can assure a better understanding, and hopefully a proper use of idioms. Our students would communicate with accuracy and understand expression heard around them. However our job is to motivate them to sound as they are, to keep their identity and not be ashamed of sometimes making a mistake. Not even native speakers are perfect. We are not perfect in our mother tongue.

There is no easy way to approach this topic. It is a controversial subject but we cannot avoid teaching it. What is clear is that we have to engage learners on getting more knowledge about it, and we all have to keep in mind that the use of idioms does not make someone a better speaker, to have a great English you don't have to sound like a native, you have to be understood, idioms are for sure part of it, but they are not everything.

5. Bibliography

KAVKA, Stalislav. Some Hints On The Importance Of Teaching Idiomaticity. Article presentend at University of Ostrava, 1999.

RICHARDS, Jack C, RODGERS, Theodore S. Approaches And Methods in Language Teaching. 2 Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

O'KEEFFE, Anne, MCCARTHY, Michael, and CARTER, Ronald. From Corpus To Classroom. 1 Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.