Opening Pandora’s box: A corpus-based study of idioms in ELT materials

Y. H. Chen; L.  Wang

doi:10.18823/asiatefl.2016.13.4.10.381

Opening Pandora’s box: A corpus-based study of idioms in ELT materials

Y. H. Chen
, L. Wang

University of Nottingham Ningbo China

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

Idiomatic expressions have increasingly received attention in ELT over the past few decades as they are an indispensable part of our daily communication. Depending on the degree of literalness, Fernando (1996) divides idioms into three categories: pure (non-literal), semi-literal and literal (as illustrated in TABLE 1). As pure idioms, often linguistic metaphors, tend to be understood figuratively, they are considered ‘the most ambiguous multi-word expression’ within the three classifications (Hummer & Stathi, 2006). Characterized by the feature of semantic opacity, pure idioms often cause great difficulty for L2 learners and are therefore the focus of the current study.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	381-390
Number of pages	10
Journal	Journal of Asia TEFL
Volume	13
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.18823/asiatefl.2016.13.4.10.381
Publication status	Published - 31 Dec 2016
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Our journal will be published online only starting in the year of 2016 and will be available for anyone with access to the Internet. That is to say that paid subscription is no longer needed, and any organization or individual will be able to access our e-journal anytime anywhere for free of charge.

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Cite this

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abstract = "Idiomatic expressions have increasingly received attention in ELT over the past few decades as they are an indispensable part of our daily communication. Depending on the degree of literalness, Fernando (1996) divides idioms into three categories: pure (non-literal), semi-literal and literal (as illustrated in TABLE 1). As pure idioms, often linguistic metaphors, tend to be understood figuratively, they are considered {\textquoteleft}the most ambiguous multi-word expression{\textquoteright} within the three classifications (Hummer \& Stathi, 2006). Characterized by the feature of semantic opacity, pure idioms often cause great difficulty for L2 learners and are therefore the focus of the current study. ",

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Opening Pandora’s box: A corpus-based study of idioms in ELT materials

Abstract

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