Teaching Idioms (Part 1)

Getting my students to locate 29 idioms in a story was not easy (especially after the cross-country event, with them complaining of being tired etc. etc). Yet most of them were able to identify between 20-29 idioms in our English class today. The feedback to the question, "Why did you select those expressions as idioms?" gave rise to the following responses:

• 'because they are strange words'
• 'because they are different from the rest'
• 'because they are interesting'
• 'because I don't know what they mean' (very interesting response!)

 As this was part of my action research lesson, their responses will be useful data for me. As the class was a 40-minute class, the lesson ended with the identification of the idioms only. Their task at home was to look up the meanings of the idioms we had listed. Tomorrow we will list out the meanings of the idioms as used in the context of the story. This is where meaning-making comes into play- literal and figurative meanings.  It would be interesting to see whether they are able to give the right meaning to the idioms.

Explaining 'context' to my students was not easy but extremely important, so that they know what is the intended meaning of the idiom. I've planned some strategies for tomorrow's lesson and hope to achieve the objectives...