IDIOMS for ESL Students: April 2014

Monday, April 14, 2014

A still tongue keeps a wise head

Prudent and intelligent people usually keep quiet and don't do much talking.

”He was so quiet in class I thought he did not understand the lesson. But he got the highest grade in the exams. Indeed, a still tongue keeps a wise head!”

A steal

This is something that costs much less than it is really worth.
“I got this jacket for a steal, at half its original price!”

He is one who finds difficulty blending, or who cannot seem to blend with the people around him; a misfit.

“Everybody else in his class loves outdoor activities but all he wants to do during free time is stay in his room or sit in front of his computer. He’s a square peg in a round hole.”

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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The Author

Monday, April 14, 2014

A still tongue keeps a wise head

A steal

A square peg in a round hole