Teaching Idioms and Proverbs in EFL Classes

Foreign language learners of English often have trouble in understanding idiomatic expressions and using them correctly in the appropriate situation. In order to enable students improve their vocabulary, teachers should become aware of the importance of idioms and proverbs and how to deal with them correctly. This paper is based on my studies and experiences in the two credit course entitled Idioms and Metaphorical Expressions in Translation . Even though students and teachers judge the idioms as useless, due to the fact that the expressions are not frequently encountered in real life situations. Such a belief is in line with Simpson and Mendis (2003), Liu (2003), and Irujo (1986) who also maintain that textbooks often introduce uncommon and inappropriate idioms. This study is, therefore, an attempt to present different approaches to teaching idiomatic expressions effectively, and to help teachers to make more educated decisions regarding idioms encountered in a text, and to help their students to use them in real language use

Keywords:

idioms , explicit instruction , independent strategy development