Appendix 1 - The Experiment

Participation information

Title of the Thesis: The Cognitive Linguistic Approach to Teaching idioms: A Case
Study with Estonian Secondary School EFL Students

The aim of my thesis is to test the applicability of the cognitive linguistic approach in
teaching idioms to EFL students and to assess its efficiency. Your participation in this
study is voluntary and your anonymity will be granted. The experiment lasts
approximately 20-25 minutes and it consists of two tasks, which should be filled in.
All the received information will be used for academic purposes only and it will
contribute to the compiling of a corpus at the Department of English studies in
University of Tartu.

Task 1:

Complete the sentences by filling the gaps. Use the idioms given in the box.

keep your hair on came to a head cost an arm and a leg

pay through the nose like I need a hole in the head didn’t turn a hair

pulling your leg keep your head by the skin of my teeth

turn your nose up toffee-nosed twisted my arm

1. You shouldn’t ______________ at 200 euros a week. It’s better than nothing.

2. _________________, Mike! Your car isn’t badly damaged.

3. These cakes are delicious, but they _______________________.

4. My boss asked me to go to London. I need a trip to London _______________________.

5. He’s nice and friendly, but his brother is very ____________________.

6. We had to ____________________ to get our car repaired, but at least it’s working now.

7. The conflict between the company and the workers ____________at the annual general
meeting.

8. I didn’t really want to do the job, but he _____________________ and I said yes.

9. I haven’t really won the lottery, I was only ____________________.

10. You should try to ___________________ when everybody around you are panicking.

11. My boss _____________________ when I handed in my notice.

12. I escaped a disaster ________________________.

Task 2:

Write a short passage using 5 of the given idioms. Try to make the text cohesive and
logical.
Appendix 2 – Categories for Assessing Task 2

Categories for assessing task 2.

Idioms No idioms One idiom Two Three Four Five
used used/task used. idioms idioms idioms idioms
left used. used. used. used.
1 point
undone.
2 points 3 points 4 points 5 points
0 points
Correctly No idioms One idiom Two Three Four Five
used used used idioms idioms idioms idioms
idioms correctly, correctly. used used used used
task left correctly. correctly. correctly. correctly.
1 point
undone.
2 points 3 points 4 points 5 points
0 points
Vocabula Task left Six or Five Four Three One or
ry and undone. more grammar grammar grammar two
grammar grammar mistakes, mistakes, mistakes, grammar
0 points
mistakes, uses uses but uses mistakes,
uses overly simple good but uses
overly simplistic vocabular vocabular good and
simplistic vocabular y. y. colourful
vocabular y. vocabulary
3 points 4 points
y. .
2 points
1 point 5 points
Coherenc Task left No story, No story, Story, but Functionin Fully
e undone. separate but some no central g story, functionin
sentences. sentences theme, some g story,
0 points
connected. some sentences every
1 point
sentences not sentence
2 points
connected. connected. connected.

3 points 4 points 5 points

Appendix 3 – The Idioms Used in the Experiment

Idiom Description COCA BNC frequency

frequency
Keep your hair on be calm/calm 3 tokens 18 tokens
down
Pay through the to pay a lot of 26 tokens 12 tokens
nose money
Pulling joking 42 tokens 22 tokens
your/his/her leg
Turn your/his/her to refuse 8 tokens 5 tokens
nose up
Come/came to a the situation has 99 tokens 136 tokens
head gotten so bad that
it has to be dealt
with
Like I need a hole do not need it at 3 tokens 0 tokens
in the head all
Keep your head to keep calm/to 20 tokens 10 tokens
be calm
Toffee-nosed a person who 2 tokens 10 tokens
look down on
others
Cost an arm and a to be very 28 tokens 4 tokens
leg expensive
Didn’t/don’t turn to show no 6 tokens 6 tokens
a hair reaction
By the skin of my barely manage to 19 tokens 1 token
teeth do something
Twisted to persuade 6 tokens 3 tokens
my/his/her arm somebody to do
something
The aim of this chapter is to investigate the difficulties students face during
the process of translating idioms, mainly the problem of non-equivalence. It also aims
at identifying learner’s strategies in interpreting both familiar and unfamiliar idioms,
from English into Ukrainian and vice versa, especially when they do not find a direct
equivalence in the target language. This chapter provides also details about the research
strategy adopted to check the hypothesis together with the means used to collect data
for analyzing it, including site and sample selection, and the analysis approach adopted in
this research.

Description of the Test

The test includes four main parts. The first part is a test of knowledge made up of
twelve (12) de-contextualized idioms selected on the basis of their frequency in English use
and according to the degree of transparency. The second part is related to the first one. It
consists of the same twelve previous idioms, but they are taken in their different contexts of
use in order to make a comparison between the results in part one and two. The third part
includes ten (10) Ukrainian idioms given to students to be translated into English. The aim
behind this is to investigate the students’ pitfalls in translating idioms in both English and
Ukrainian. The fourth part, however, deals with the students’ procedures or strategies while
translating English idioms into Ukrainian and vice versa.