A thematic corpus-based study of idioms in the Corpus of Contemporary American English
Abstract The traditional approach to presenting idioms relies mainly on teachers’ or materials writers’ judgement, one-by-one and quite incidentally; and the existing teaching materials and references for idioms are mostly intuition-based. However, a more recent approach to better teaching and learn...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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SpringerOpen
2019-10-01
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| Series: | Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40862-019-0076-4 |
| _version_ | 1818218027341053952 |
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| author | Elaheh Rafatbakhsh Alireza Ahmadi |
| author_facet | Elaheh Rafatbakhsh Alireza Ahmadi |
| author_sort | Elaheh Rafatbakhsh |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract The traditional approach to presenting idioms relies mainly on teachers’ or materials writers’ judgement, one-by-one and quite incidentally; and the existing teaching materials and references for idioms are mostly intuition-based. However, a more recent approach to better teaching and learning idioms is to present them under categories of their common themes and topics. Corpus linguistics can be of much contribution through helping the design and development of more authentic and systematic materials using comprehensive corpora which are typically the best representatives of the target language. In this connection, the present study aimed at searching for the thematic index of 1506 idioms under 81 categories at the end of the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms in the largest freely available corpus, i.e. the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), composed of more than 520 million words. To this end, we used a manuscript in PHP written by a professional computer programmer especially for this purpose. The findings yielded a list of idioms sorted based on their frequencies under their theme-based categories. To focus on the more frequently-used idioms of various themes in real contexts, materials designers, teachers, and learners of English can benefit from this idiom list in textbooks and classroom activities. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-12T07:17:14Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-711df61ddd524878a1e47b26024da4a7 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2363-5169 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-12T07:17:14Z |
| publishDate | 2019-10-01 |
| publisher | SpringerOpen |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education |
| spelling | doaj.art-711df61ddd524878a1e47b26024da4a72022-12-22T00:33:28ZengSpringerOpenAsian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education2363-51692019-10-014112110.1186/s40862-019-0076-4A thematic corpus-based study of idioms in the Corpus of Contemporary American EnglishElaheh Rafatbakhsh0Alireza Ahmadi1Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz UniversityDepartment of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz UniversityAbstract The traditional approach to presenting idioms relies mainly on teachers’ or materials writers’ judgement, one-by-one and quite incidentally; and the existing teaching materials and references for idioms are mostly intuition-based. However, a more recent approach to better teaching and learning idioms is to present them under categories of their common themes and topics. Corpus linguistics can be of much contribution through helping the design and development of more authentic and systematic materials using comprehensive corpora which are typically the best representatives of the target language. In this connection, the present study aimed at searching for the thematic index of 1506 idioms under 81 categories at the end of the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms in the largest freely available corpus, i.e. the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), composed of more than 520 million words. To this end, we used a manuscript in PHP written by a professional computer programmer especially for this purpose. The findings yielded a list of idioms sorted based on their frequencies under their theme-based categories. To focus on the more frequently-used idioms of various themes in real contexts, materials designers, teachers, and learners of English can benefit from this idiom list in textbooks and classroom activities.http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40862-019-0076-4IdiomsCorpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)Frequency listESL/EFL teachingMaterials development |
| spellingShingle | Elaheh Rafatbakhsh Alireza Ahmadi A thematic corpus-based study of idioms in the Corpus of Contemporary American English Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education Idioms Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) Frequency list ESL/EFL teaching Materials development |
| title | A thematic corpus-based study of idioms in the Corpus of Contemporary American English |
| title_full | A thematic corpus-based study of idioms in the Corpus of Contemporary American English |
| title_fullStr | A thematic corpus-based study of idioms in the Corpus of Contemporary American English |
| title_full_unstemmed | A thematic corpus-based study of idioms in the Corpus of Contemporary American English |
| title_short | A thematic corpus-based study of idioms in the Corpus of Contemporary American English |
| title_sort | thematic corpus based study of idioms in the corpus of contemporary american english |
| topic | Idioms Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) Frequency list ESL/EFL teaching Materials development |
| url | http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40862-019-0076-4 |
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