Essay On Idioms

In the field of Modern Languages and Linguistics, words are of great importance. A language’s phonology (study of how sounds are organized and used), morphology (study of the form and structure of words), syntax (study of the rules that govern sentence structure), semantics (study of meaning of words, sentences, and expressions), pragmatics (study of aspects of meaning and language use and context), and phonetics (study of human speech sounds) all play an important part in everyday life. These have a major impact in understanding the intent of what is spoken or heard. Due to the importance of communication, literary elements such as metaphors (which are defined as a figure of speech in which a word or phrase

There are words that the entire discourse community knows. For example they all know that recess means go out to play. But as Mrs. H. Walker informed me in teaching the lexis may be similar but it varies from classroom to classroom. For example her class knows that “Station Time ” means they can go to different stations to play but the same concept in another class could be called “Free Play”. I learned that some lexis sticks around forever and never changes like “ Story time”, “Homework”, and “Timeout”. “Language is important is important because it’s how I communicate with my students” says Mrs. H.

Puns are popular literary device that widely used in English .They are a play on words by using a word that suggests two or more meanings or by exploiting similar sound words having different meaning. This is generally done to the affect of creating humor , irony , ambiguity and wryness .Puns consider a difficult problem in translation , many consider it as untranslatable . Yet , a translator may encounter a certain problems because pun words are frequently associated with confusion and incorrect translation . Indeed it is also one aspect of directness , puns are inherently misleading by virtue that each pun word obtains more than one meaning .

All students need direct instruction of vocabulary, but it is especially imperative for ELLs. They need much more exposure to new vocabulary than their native-English-speaking classmates. ELLs need to learn cognates, prefixes, suffixes, and root words to enhance their ability to make sense of new lexicon. Beginning ELLs and more advanced ELL students should actively engage in holistic activities to practice new vocabulary because learning words out of context is difficult for these students. If they memorize the meanings of the words on a list, they will not be able to use the words in their own writing or verbal production until they really understand the meanings. When vocabulary instruction includes explicit, implicit, and strategy instruction, students are repeatedly exposed to the target vocabulary in a variety of contexts which increases their individual vocabulary development and the other resources that help in doing so is the Semantic Mapping primary focus on visual relationships, which is helpful to students from all backgrounds.

Idiom is a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words. Which basically means having a own saying. In the 4th paragraph, a phrase “jump down my throat” was used by the write to react angrily to something that someone said or did.

Idioms are difficult for ESL students because they have never been taught to them in context, with a link to a situation.

Building vocabulary is an important task in the early grades. There has long been debate on how one should go about teaching vocabulary such as, it is better to teach a limited number of words fully and more intense or expose children to many words to enhance “incidental learning”. Research has proven that incorporating both into instruction is most effective. Read-aloud and teachers increase use of vocabulary have also been proven to help vocabulary and word knowledge. There are three tiers of words that children are presented in their life. Tier one words are those that they are most familiar with such as park, tier 2 are the increasingly hard words such as fortunate and finally the tier 3 words are words that students have rarely been exposed

In addition to the vocabulary in their readings, students have been expected to learn twenty-five new vocabulary words per week. The focus is not on rote memorization of definitions; students must know synonyms, antonyms, and especially how to use vocabulary words in the context of the entire sentence. They study how to choose the right word for their purpose (diction) and analyze the subtleties of language.

In chapter eight of their book, Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum, Vacca et al. (2014, pp. 238-279) discuss “developing vocabulary and concepts” in the class room. The authors present numerous strategies throughout this chapter and real world examples of them in action in a classroom. This chapter contains a plethora of information that is invaluable to the classroom teacher who is preparing students to understand the challenging vocabulary words they will be reading over or tested on. While reading this chapter, I came across many concepts and terms that were familiar to me and a few that were new or surprising.

Every few years new foreign language teaching methods arrive on the scene. New textbooks appear far more frequently. New methods and textbooks may reflect current developments in linguistic/applied linguistic theory or recent pedagogical trends. Sometimes they are said to be based on recent developments in language learning theory and research. For example, one approach to teaching may emphasize the value of having students to imitate and practice a set of correct sentences

Although vocabulary is the sub-skill of a language, it plays a very important role in language learning and teaching. In fact, vocabulary is central to language and is of paramount importance to language learners. On the other hand, words are the building blocks of a language that are used to label objects, actions, and ideas. In other words, people cannot convey the intended meaning without knowing vocabulary. It is widely accepted that vocabulary is a very important part in English language learning because no one can communicate in any meaningful way without vocabulary. As McCarthy (1990) stated, the single, biggest component of any language course is vocabulary. Nation (1990) also affirms that vocabulary can be considered as the most important element in language learning because Learners think that many of their

Vocabulary plays a significant role in English as second language learning process. For the majority of English as Second Language(ESL) learners, the ultimate goal of learning the language is to understand (read and listen) and communicate (write and speak) with little difficulty and the lack of sufficient vocabulary may be the constraint of such goal (Folse, 2004). As the bedrock of English and as well as language, vocabulary also facilitates the development of other language skills: lexical richness leads to the progress in the use of language, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing skills (Nation, 1994). Reversely, The improvement in such skills may enhance learners vocabulary size as the exposure to more learning materials improves the capacity to acquire new vocabulary. (The importance of learning vocabulary/ why vocabulary?)

In this research, the researcher discusses the figurative language based on Perrine’s perception. According to Perrine (1977:61-109), figurative language consists of 12 kinds, they are: simile, metaphor, personification, apostrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, symbol, allegory, paradox, hyperbole/overstatement, understatement, and irony.

The language is a part of the culture and the carrier of the culture at the same time. The culture can not get away from the language. The language can not get away from the culture, either. It is impossible to study a foreign language text without considering the culture it embodied. Idiom is the essence and crystallization of a language and culture. It is the summary of life experiences of the people in a particular district. Usually, it is short but it can reflect the special features of a certain culture. Therefore, the accurate understanding of the English idiom does not only involve the phonetic conversion but also involve the western cultural conversion. It requires that the learner know the western culture background well.

Sometimes it’s not what you say, but how you say it, and it can be very true in sales and help give you that extra push to close a sale. There are plenty of ways