IDIOMS for ESL Students: A little learning is a dangerous thing

Saturday, December 28, 2013

A little learning is a dangerous thing

A person may believe he is already an expert after gaining some skill or knowledge in a particular field or discipline. Little learning, however, can cause more damage than benefit if improperly applied.

“He said he'd attended a course on cellphone repair, but when he tried to adjust the ringing tone of my phone, it stopped working altogether! Indeed, a little learning is a dangerous thing.”

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Foreword

An idiom (id-ee-uhm) is an expression composed of a word or a combination of words which, when taken together as a single unit, has a meaning that is different from the standard definition of the individual words. It has a fixed grammatical structure and a specialized or figurative meaning that develop from common usage by a particular people in a particular region, culture or era. Although idioms take root and flourish in a local setting, many of them acquire universal use and gain international acceptance.

When taken literally, idioms convey an idea that is very different from their specialized meaning. For example, the expression a tough cookie conjures an image that it totally different from its figurative meaning, which is a strong and self-confident person who doesn’t yield easily to pressure. Some idioms, when taken literally, are reduced to a heap of words that don’t seem to make sense. Examples of this are the expressions all ears, a square peg in a round hole, train of thought, and many more. For this reason, idioms cannot be directly translated to although they may have figurative equivalent in other languages.

Native speakers take them for granted and use them in their spoken and written communication at home, in the workplace, or in the community, but students learning English as a second or foreign language find idioms difficult to comprehend. This is understandable because an ESL or EFL student analyzing an idiom for the first time would try to deduce its meaning from the literal definition of its parts. Expectedly, this method will give him the literal translation but not its figurative meaning. If he stops with the literal translation the process will result only in confusion. But with proper tutorial he should discover its figurative meaning and, with constant use, successfully complete the assimilation process.

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