A Thematic Corpus-Based Study of Idioms in the Corpus of Contemporary American English

Autor/inn/en	Rafatbakhsh, Elaheh; Ahmadi, Alireza
Titel	A Thematic Corpus-Based Study of Idioms in the Corpus of Contemporary American English
Quelle	In: Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education, 4 (2019), Artikel 11 (21 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Ahmadi, Alireza)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	2363-5169
DOI	10.1186/s40862-019-0076-4
Schlagwörter	Computational Linguistics; Figurative Language; North American English; Teaching Methods; Learning Processes; Word Lists; Word Frequency; Phrase Structure; English (Second Language); Second Language Learning; Second Language Instruction + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Linguistics; Computerlinguistik; Amerikanisches Englisch; Teaching method; Lehrmethode; Unterrichtsmethode; Learning process; Lernprozess; Wortliste; Word analysis; Frequency; Wortanalyse; Häufigkeit; Phrasenstruktur; English as second language; English; Second Language; Englisch als Zweitsprache; Zweitsprachenerwerb; Fremdsprachenunterricht
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. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01