Quote:
Originally Posted by Naamplao  As I said at the start, there are many approaches to teaching idioms. I gave you one that I try most often.
The trick is to get the student to think while they are reading. Figuring out the meaning of an idiom is no different than figuring out the meaning of a hard word. Native English speakers don't know the meaning of every word/idiom that they read. But when we come upon an unknown word/idiom we take our best guess at its meaning based on the context of the text around it. Most of the time our guesses are pretty close. If you see the word again in another piece of writing you might change your guess based on it's context or it might confirm your first guess.
Believe it or not...if we are exposed to the word often enough we might even take the time to look up the meaning in a dictionary of words/idioms and add it permanently to our vocabulary. 
Evaluating context is very important in English and other languages too for that matter. |
Thanks Naamplao.
You just told me something I could really practice with. For most often that I come across new words, I quickly look it over my dictionary without even trying to make guesses using the context. Of course I do get the real meaning of the word and comprehends the sentence right away by doing that but the vocabulary doesnīt stick much in my mind to that I couldnīt recall some of them when I need them.