简论RealStrategies试述to试述Promote试述Real试述Understanding试述of试述English试述Idioms

Abstract：In English study, the wide range of idioms used in various situations has brought great difficulties for our English learners owing to their semantic unity, structural stability, permutation, productivity, strong cultural dependence. The author holds the view that the meaning of an idiom concerns closely with its associative meaning, such as logic, psychology, sociology, history. Therefore in this paper three ways are proposed to oid wrong interpreting of English idioms, that is, through context, through cultural connotations, and through cognitive mechanis.
Key words：English idioms; features of idioms; strategies
1672-1578（2013)03-0008-02
1 Introduction
One of the most difficult aspects of learning any foreign language is not being able to understand and use a wide range of idioms. The English language has over 15,000 idioms and native speakers use them very frequently and naturally, often without being aware of them themselves. They are found at work, schools, public places and at homes. In communication, as English learners, we often come across and get confused about various idioms with distinctive cultural characteristics. How to solve this problem?
2 Definition and Features of Idioms
What is idiom? Different people he different understandings. Makkai (1972) has proposed five criteria in identifying idioms, two of which are “The presence of at least two free morphemes in a given expression” and “The semantic unpredictability of idioms arising from the fact that an idiom has a meaning, which can not be deduced from its component parts”. Hu Zhuanglin thinks “Most phrasal lexemes are idioms, especially a sequence of words which is semantically and often syntactically restricted.”.
No matter what ideas they hold, Idioms at least contain these features. First It is of semantic and structural institutionalization. The meaning of an idiom is metaphorical rather than literal. It is not a result of the compositional function of their parts. The grammatical form of an idiom is invariable and fixed. The process of substitution is not allowed and passive constructions can not be formed. As W.J. Ball once said, It is the “use of familiar words in an unfamiliar sense” Owing to this feature, we learners can never take the meaning of phrase or sentence segments for granted. Second , idioms are productive, which ref源于：论文格式模板下载www.618jyw.com
ers to the property that the formation rules of idioms can enables English speakers to produce or understand indefinite number of idioms in their daily life. Due to Christian religion and Hebrew culture, a large number of idioms originated from myths of Greece and Rome, classic fables , historical events .In addition, they can be also produced from anecdotes of well-known persons, customs, entertainments, people’s daily life, names of animals. Some idioms even rooted in nigation, hunting, or farming. ．A Dictionary of English Idioms published by The Commercial Press includes 35，000 idioms，and An English－Chinese Dictionary of Idioms includes 25，400 idioms． Third, It is characterized by non-replacement. That is to say, no words or sentence elements can substitute for or can be embedded in or be subtracted from the original idiom. Take “kick the bucket” for example. We can’t say at random “ kick the big bucket” or “kick bucket” or “kick the pail” .3 Classification of English Idioms
As we he known, an English idiom is a group of words with a special meaning different from the meanings of its constituent words. Strictly speaking, idioms are expressions that are not readily understandable from their literal meaning of individual elements. In a broad sense, idiom may include colloquialis, catchphrases, slang expressions, proverbs, etc. They form an important part of the English vocabulary. In most cases they can be divided into phrase idioms, clause idioms and sentence idioms from the perspective of structure.
All phrase idioms he a noun, verb, adjective, preposition or an adverb as the central word; they correspond to the familiar parts of speech, and are capable of a given syntactic function in sentences, such as“cold shoulder”,“sit down under”, “wet behind the ears”,“far and wide”,“in one’s cups”.
Clause idioms is another form of idioms. Most of these are terse, colloquial, vivid and charged with life. They fall often into these patterns: ⑴verb＋complement as in “The factory went broke” ⑵verb＋direct object as in “Your brother has played the game all his life ⑶verb＋direct object ＋complement as in “My friend has made her clasate a laughing stock.”⑷ verb＋indirect object ＋direct object as in “The company has sold you a real pup.”
In English, there are also a large variety of sentence idioms typical of proverbs, which is a short well-known saying that states an obvious truth, familiar experience, a short statement of wisdom or advice that has passed into general use. They generally refer to common experience and are often expressed in metaphor, alliteration, or rhyme, e.g., “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,”“When the cat's away, the mice will play.”
4 Strategies of Real Understanding of English Idioms

4.1 Through Context

One of the best ways to learn idioms is by looking at the context in which it is used. Modern linguists he broadened its scope to include both linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts. Different from linguistic context which involves lexical, grammatical and verbal context, extra-linguistic of situation refers to the entire cultural background against which a word, or an utterance or a speech event has to be set. English abounds in idioms that are characterized by their colorful and thought-provoking expressions, involving history, religion, social customs etc. Therefore understanding the meaning of an idiom depends more on its extra-linguistic context than on its linguistic context. It can be fulfilled by concentrating on the actual speech situation and its cultural background of the sentence to guess the meaning. For example: We are going to he a surprise party for Tom tomorrow. It's a secret, so please don't let the cat out of the bag. Clearly “Let the cat out of the bag” is an idiom. By looking at the words preceding it should be easy to guess that the speaker does not want you to tell Tom about the surprise party. Basing on the context of situation, “let the c源于：免费论文查重站www.618jyw.com
at out of the bag” must mean something like “ reveal a secret” or “ tell a secret”. Another example is “dark horse” which means an almost unknown contestant regarded as by few as a likely winner or a person who gets or may get the nomination unexpectedly, often by a compromise. As a political phrase，“dark horse” appeared for the first time in the national Democratic Party convention of 1884．The “dark horse” was James Knox Polk，who became the 11th President of the United States. So if you want to he a full understanding of the idiom, you should rely on its cultural background.

4.2 Through Cultural Connotations

Idioms as a special form of language carry a large amount of cultural information such as history, geography, religion, custom, nationality，psychology, thought pattern and etc, and therefore are closely related to culture. They are the heritage of history and product of cultural evolvement. Consequently, we can know much about culture through studying idioms and in turn get better understanding of idioms by learning the cultural background behind them. Idiom basically comes from the folk, and to a great extent, reflects a nationality’s cultural characteristics, the different nationality’s experience of life and the national character. Same as novel, poetry and other literary work, idiom is the essence of various national languages. The very many idioms are even very difficult to find in common dictionaries, but has vivid life feature and trueborn national characteristic. This is also a phenomenon which worthy of the language researchers and learners’ attention. For example, “Pandora’s box”,“The apple of discord”,“meet one’s Waterloo”. Some other idioms can show the specific geographic environmental properties of oceanic culture in these idioms as “Spend money like water”, “Rats lee a sinking ship”, “on the rock”. Still some idioms carry the trace of commercial and marine economy like “Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.” “Put money aside for a rainy day”. Even some of them bear the Christian impact on the English people, as“God’s mill grinds slow but sure”, “Man proposes and God disposes”.

4.3 Through Cognitive Mechanis

Cognitive mechanis is about the people’s way of thinking，a conceptual theory developed by George Lakoff. It is a new way to study English idioms which attempts to analyze English idioms in order to support the hypothesis that these expressions are motivated by cognitive mechanis, such as metaphor, metonymy and common knowledge. The analysis present has shown that cognitive mechanis are at work in the process of understanding the figurative meaning of English idioms and in using English idioms. Metaphor is a very powerful cognitive mechani. There are mainly three basic metaphors: conceptualized metaphor, orientational metaphor and ontological metaphor. Each one of them is very useful for English idioms’ teaching and learning. Besides, similarity-creating metaphor is also a powerful metaphor, which is very helpful for mastering English idioms and using them in a lively manner. Second, Conceptualized metonymy is beneficial in understanding English idioms containing parts of human bodies such as “hand”, “head”, “face”, “eye” and “nose”, while symbolic metonymy is very helpful in understanding English idioms carrying much religious or cultural information. Finally, common knowledge stored in people’s minds is the most general cognitive mechani for understanding English idioms, most of whose literal meanings are just examples of their idiomatic meanings. In many cases, the above-mentioned three cognitive mechanis (i.e. metaphor,met源于：标准论文格式范文www.618jyw.com
onymy and common knowledge) should be combined in order to best understand and use English idioms.
5 Conclusion
English idioms are one of the important language forms. They are formed through long history and are developing along with people’s social life. However they are becoming a main obstacle to our Chinese learners. This problem is sure to be dealt with by predicting the meaning through the context, admitting the cultural differences, and finally employing the cognitive mechanis, for the charm of English idioms underlies in its understandability in context, its unique cultural connotations, and the predictability of its meaning. They are the most effective way to oid misunderstanding English idioms for English learners.
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作者简介：刘娟（1964-），女，四川内江人，内江师范学院外国语学院，副教授，主要研究方向：英语语言学和英语教学。