Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Идиомы в английском языке
Идиомы в английском языке
Санкт-Петербурга
Исследовательская работа
Научный руководитель:
Учитель английского языка
Алексеева Анастасия Андреевна
Санкт-Петербург
2023 год
Contents
Introduction. …............................................................................3-4
2
Introduction.
English is vital for international communication. People from all over the
Globe learn it, but do they discover its full potential? Idioms are the answer. How
many of these people do not even know about the existence of idiomatic
expressions? We cannot say exactly. What we can say precisely is the fact that if a
person does not know any basic idioms, he will not be able to communicate in an
appropriate way with foreigners, who constantly use them. That is why the
importance of learning idioms cannot be doubted. Native speakers use idioms
every day, so there comes up a couple of simple questions – what is special about
idioms and why are they so ubiquitous in foreigners’ speech?
The main purpose of the research consists of making our own exercise book to
increase the level of English proficiency and to improve language skills among the
students of 5th-11th grades, that can be further used in Olympics or on exam.
Chapter 1.
4
The researching of the theoretical features of idioms and studying them.
5
The English language includes different types of idioms. According to
Kövecses idioms are a “mixed bag” which “involves metaphors (e.g. spill the
beans), metonymies (e.g. throw up one’s hands), pairs of words (e.g. cats and
dogs), idioms with it (e.g. live it up), similes (e.g. as easy as pie), sayings (e.g. a
bird in the hand is worth two in the bush), phrasal verbs (e.g. come up, as in
“Christmas is coming up”), grammatical idioms (e.g. let alone), and others
(Kövecses, 2010: 231).
However, Fernando thinks about dividing idioms by their opaqueness. In his
opinion there are three groups of idioms, first - pure ones, which means for idiom
to be non-literal and fully opaque (e.g. to let the cat out of the bag - this idiom
means “to reveal a secret”), second group - semi-idioms - they are considered to
be partially opaque (e.g. foot the bill, which means ‘pay’), and the last type - literal
idioms, which are believed to be transparent (e.g. of course, in any case).
(Fernando qtd in Strakšiene 2009: 14).
Seidl & McMordie in their research considered that idioms can have
different structures, as result they divided idioms by their clarity and form.
According to them there are three types of idiomatic expressions: idioms with
irregular form and clear meaning (e.g. give someone to understand, do the dirty
on someone); idioms with regular form and unclear meaning (e.g. cut no ice,
bring the house down); idioms with irregular form and unclear meaning (e.g. be at
large, be at daggers drawn).
(Seidl & McMordie 1988: 13).
Cacciari & Glucksberg considered that idioms, according to the dimension
of compositionality, can be non-compositional, partially compositional, and fully
compositional. “In non-compositional idioms, no relations between the idiom’s
constituents and the idiom’s meaning can be discerned, as in the idiom cheesecake
to refer to pinup art [...]. In partially compositional idioms, some relationships
between an idiom’s constituents and its idiomatic meaning can be discerned
6
and exploited. Although one could not infer the meaning to die from the literal
meaning of kick the bucket, the idiom’s literal meaning does constrain its use and
comprehension. [...] In fully compositional idioms, the constituents map
directly onto their idiomatic referents, as in the idiom pop the question”
(Glucksberg 2001: 73; Cacciari & Glucksberg, 1991).
In this project we consider idioms by their semantic classification. According to
scientists’ studies there are three types of idioms:
A. Phraseological combinations.
B. Phraseological units.
These are stable phrases in which the meaning of the whole is motivated and
derived from the meaning of the individual components. The individual words
included in its composition are semantically dependent, and the meaning of each of
the components is subject to the unity of the general figurative meaning of the
entire phraseological expression as a whole. However, we can guess the meaning
of the phrase. For example: "to know the way the cat is jumping". This idiom
means “have an exceptional flair for changing situations and quickly adapt to
them.”.
C. Phraseological unions.
These are stable phrases that are a semantically indivisible whole, and the
meaning of the whole is not derived from the meanings of individual words that
make up this phraseological fusion. The semantic independence of words -
components is completely lost. Such phraseological units are "pure idioms". With a
7
literal translation, we cannot understand the meaning. For example: "to show the
white feather". That means “to be afraid”. None of the words in the literal hints at
the meaning of the whole combination.
Conclusion.
By this part of the research, we found information about idioms’ definition and
classification, we also answered a couple of questions involving importance and
usage of idiomatic expressions in everyday life.
Chapter 2.
8
2.1. Tasks and examples.
Working on the practical part of our research was consisted of finding some
types of exercises and rebuilding them using our own examples. We used four
types of exercises in our work, which can easily help to improve the level of
English language proficiency and knowledge of idiomatic expressions in our
school. Our product can be used to prepare to English Olympics and as a result it
will improve the results among students from our school. What is more, this
product can be easily used on lessons to teach students idioms more effectively,
because our tasks are easy-to-understand and complete, what makes it easier to a
person to remember idiomatic expressions.
Conclusion.
9
By the end of our research, we must sum up all work that was done, we
completed all four tasks which were set in the beginning: we found out what is an
“idiom”, considered several types of idioms’ classification, found examples of
tasks and finally redone it with our own idiomatic expressions.
Idiom, if we follow the easiest way to say the meaning, is the group of
words in fixed order that has a particular meaning that differs from the meanings of
each word on its own. Excepting official definition of an “idiom” we would like to
add that using idioms is the great way to brighten up your speech and make it more
interesting and powerful.
11