How to Teach American Idioms

Idioms in a Detective Story

American Idioms are beautiful. They are descriptive, colorful and, if you are learning English, confusing. The best way to teach idioms is to get your students to use them as soon as possible. Take the lessons in short bites -- you don't want to overwhelm your learners with too much information at one time. But it's best to incorporate idioms into your lesson plans as soon as possible to help your students get quickly onto the path of practical fluency.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

1. Select four or five idioms to focus on per lesson. Any more will be confusing. If you need help finding some, try the link in the References section.

2. Write a paragraph or two using the idioms. Highlight them.

3. Have the students guess their meanings from their context in the paragraphs you wrote.

4. Give them the definitions.

5. Engage the students in conversation. Sometimes a student's first language has similar idioms. Ask them how they express the same thing in their language.

6. Test them on the meanings of the idioms. Don't make it hard: just make it challenging to see if they understand the idioms. The "fill in the blank" method is effective for this.

7. Complete the class by having your students write a paragraph or two using the idioms.

References

• PrideUnLimited: Idioms and Axioms Currently Used in America