Communicative functions: Interacting with others

Expressing feelings and opinions

Using idioms and figurative language

When we interact with others, we often make our language more expressive and colourful by using idioms and figurative language.

Idioms

Idioms are fixed expressions with a fixed meaning and we must learn them individually in the same way as we learn individual words. As idioms have a different meaning from the literal meanings of the words in the phrase, it is often very difficult to work out the meaning. And even if we know the meanings of all the words in an idiom, we still may not know what it means. 

Students need to be introduced to idioms in the context of their use. Often the idioms must be learnt as a phrase as it is not possible to vary the components or change their grammatical structure. Idioms have many different structures, eg noun group, phrasal verb, clause. 

Here is an example of an idiom which is a noun group:

MegaMonster is a bad egg. The idiom a bad egg means a bad person, but in a joking way.

Here is an example of an idiom which is a phrasal verb:

Granny Gong ran into Miss Lee today. The idiom ran into means that two people met each other unexpectedly.

Here is an example of an idiom which is a clause:

GrumpyGhost jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. The idiom to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire does not literally mean that someone has jumped from the frying pan into the fire. It means that someone has escaped a bad situation only to find themselves in a worse one.

There are are many idioms in English and it is impossible to teach them all. You will probably find that it is more effective to teach learners how to deal with idioms. You could do this in the following ways:

	Show students how to guess the general meaning of an idiom from the context. In the following example, we can guess that a bad egg means a bad person, and also that the expression probably isn't very serious because MegaMonster is not a real person, but only an imaginary character in a children's story. MegaMonster is a bad egg.
	Show students how to clarify the meaning of an idiom with the speaker. MegaMonster is a bad egg. - MegaMonster is what? Granny Gong ran into Miss Lee today. - What did Granny Gong do? MischiefMaker jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. - What happened to MischiefMaker?

It is useful for students to learn to recognise and understand idioms, but it is not always very useful for students to learn to use them. Students should be very careful about using idioms unless they are absolutely certain of the meaning and usage. It is possible to make some very embarrassing mistakes when using the idioms of a second or foreign language!

Figurative language

When we interact with other people, we often use figurative language, such as similes and metaphors, to paint pictures with words. 

When we use a simile, we say something is like something else.

Her nose is as cute as a button. Her hair is like silk. She has dainty paws like a dancer.

When we use a metaphor, we say something is something else.

The dog next door wolfed his food.

For more information about idioms and figurative language see: 
Text types: Particular Descriptions: Different types of particular descriptions: Literary descriptions
Text types: Recounts: Different types of recounts: Literary recounts
Text types: Stories: Different types of stories: Traditional stories

Teaching activities

For PrimeTeach teaching activities which provide KS2 students with practice in idioms, see: A funny story about a deputy sheriff