Learning English language and culture through idioms: a case study at Kabardino-Balkarian State University
Svetlana Kh. Bitokova – Asiyat K. Kardanova – Madina A. Shardanova – Rosina A. Efendieva – Larisa Ch. Dzaseszeva
DOI: 10.18355/XL.2018.11.03.03
Abstract
The research seems to be urgent as idioms are always hard to be acquired by English language learners and require new methods and techniques to achieve effective results. Lack of background information does not allow English students to refer a proper name – an idiom component – to a specific object or an event, thus preventing their connection in the language consciousness. The paper suggests a special approach to learning this type of English idioms. The authors offer to start with students’ project work aimed at etymological analysis of idioms and disclosure of their motivational basis and only then proceed to the idioms training in certain creative exercises. This approach allows getting an idea of the mechanism of the idiom meaning formation and, as the research showed, considerably enhances the idioms acquisition and retention. Thus, it provides both the students’ English language competence development and culture deep knowledge. These methods have been consistently implemented at the English language lessons at Kabardino-Balkarian State University and gave positive results. The statistical significance t-test was applied to the experimental data and confirmed their reliability.
Key words: English language, idioms, teaching idioms, semantics, motivational basis, culture, proper name, project work, creative exercises