Got idioms?

If you’ve taught language for any length of time, you know that the more students map their English onto their second language, the more garbled their production can get, and the more frustrated everyone involved can get.  They think they can do a lot because they’re spouting a lot of words, but the way the words come together makes them meaningless (or an entirely different meaning than the intended one).

One of the ways to push students out of this rut is to regularly push them to use idiomatic expressions.  And then reward them.  Praise them.  Make a HUGE deal out of it. On some rubrics the difference between one proficiency level and the next in the vocabulary category is the use of an idiomatic expression.  For a game you can play to get students using idioms, check out Spin the Bottle.

Another way to get students acquiring and using idioms is to work with great songs that use them.  To work with the songs, try these activities out:

• Play the song without lyrics and see what students like or don’t like.
• Play the song without lyrics and see what students can understand.
• Play the [appropriate] official music video and guess what the song is really about.
• Show the lyrics with common words dropped and fill them in.
• Highlight repetitious phrases and get a conversation started using that phrase.
• Choose a line and ask students to change a noun or verb to accomplish a specific purpose (to apply to them: “our friendship tastes like chocolate“, to apply to a situation they know about: “Jade doesn’t want Alex to bring her flowers“, to apply to where you live: “I hope it rains Ford jobs”)
• And of course, highlight the idioms and get students using them (orally and written) in appropriate contexts
• Show some random photos (from Flickr, for example) of people or animals and see what students come up with tying the idiom to the photo (a ese oso panda le hace falta bambú).

If you’re looking for a specific idiom, try using Google to search “canción” and the idiom.  Otherwise, just look through songs you and your students like.  That’s the thing about idioms – your students need the ones that are terrifically common, and because they’re so common, you won’t have trouble finding them.

Here are a few suggestions:

For echar de menos, try
Cómo te echo de menos – by a very young Alejandro Sanz (also note te cuesta and no me vale)
Te echo de menos – Chayanne
Me haces falta – Jennifer López (with all three ways to express missing someone in Spanish!)

For vale [la pena]:
No me doy por vencido (a great idiom in itself) – Luis Fonsi
Tengo tu love –  Sie7e (biggest hit in my classroom in 2011-12)
Que no me pierda – Diego Torres ft. Julieta Venegas

For Qué lástima, Me voy – Julieta Venegas

For Me da igual :
Me da igual – Camila
¡Corre! – Jesse y Joy

Uses of acabar:
¿Qué hiciste? – Jennifer López
La paga – Juanes
Quién soy – Aleks Syntek ft. Jesse y Joy
Bésame – Camila
Tengo tu love –  Sie7e

photo credit Enokson