The Most Frequent Idioms Used in Contemporary American English: A Corpus-based Study
As a fascinating and colorful part of English language, idioms highly affect fluency, but they are quite difficult to teach and learn, and they have often been neglected particularly in ESL/EFL settings. Considering the large number of English idioms, corpus linguistics can be of great benefit in pr...
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University of Isfahan
2020-04-01
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doaj-65842245881c488780fdcc639a81e7872021-07-12T04:40:59ZengUniversity of IsfahanApplied Research on English Language2252-01982322-53432020-04-019220522810.22108/are.2019.114449.138924238The Most Frequent Idioms Used in Contemporary American English: A Corpus-based StudyElaheh Rafatbakhsh0Alireza Ahmadi1PhD Candidate of TEFL, Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, Shiraz University, Shiraz, IranAssociate Professor of TEFL, Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, Shiraz University, Shiraz, IranAs a fascinating and colorful part of English language, idioms highly affect fluency, but they are quite difficult to teach and learn, and they have often been neglected particularly in ESL/EFL settings. Considering the large number of English idioms, corpus linguistics can be of great benefit in prioritizing materials in language classrooms based on the frequency information. Accordingly, the present corpus-based study aimed at identifying the most frequent idioms in English language by analyzing the data coming from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), composed of more than 520 million words. The study involved writing a special script using Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) language which resulted in the development of five idiom lists, each containing 50 most frequently used idioms in each one of the five genres in COCA including academic, fiction, spoken, newspaper, and magazine along with their frequency of occurrences. Comparison was then made across the mentioned five genres. It was found that the spoken genre included more idioms whereas the academic genre was the least idiomatic. Furthermore, various levels of overlap was found among different genres. The least and the highest levels of overlap was found between the academic and fiction genres and between the magazine and newspaper genres respectively. The academic genre had more overlap with the newspaper and magazine genres. The findings can benefit EFL materials developers, teachers, and learners in recognizing and including frequently-used authentic idioms in language classrooms and textbooks.https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_24238_d247a71eb2906e5271d5d9ac5cff5680.pdfcorpus of contemporary american english (coca)eflfrequency listidiomsmaterials development |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Elaheh Rafatbakhsh Alireza Ahmadi |
spellingShingle |
Elaheh Rafatbakhsh Alireza Ahmadi The Most Frequent Idioms Used in Contemporary American English: A Corpus-based Study Applied Research on English Language corpus of contemporary american english (coca) efl frequency list idioms materials development |
author_facet |
Elaheh Rafatbakhsh Alireza Ahmadi |
author_sort |
Elaheh Rafatbakhsh |
title |
The Most Frequent Idioms Used in Contemporary American English: A Corpus-based Study |
title_short |
The Most Frequent Idioms Used in Contemporary American English: A Corpus-based Study |
title_full |
The Most Frequent Idioms Used in Contemporary American English: A Corpus-based Study |
title_fullStr |
The Most Frequent Idioms Used in Contemporary American English: A Corpus-based Study |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Most Frequent Idioms Used in Contemporary American English: A Corpus-based Study |
title_sort |
most frequent idioms used in contemporary american english: a corpus-based study |
publisher |
University of Isfahan |
series |
Applied Research on English Language |
issn |
2252-0198 2322-5343 |
publishDate |
2020-04-01 |
description |
As a fascinating and colorful part of English language, idioms highly affect fluency, but they are quite difficult to teach and learn, and they have often been neglected particularly in ESL/EFL settings. Considering the large number of English idioms, corpus linguistics can be of great benefit in prioritizing materials in language classrooms based on the frequency information. Accordingly, the present corpus-based study aimed at identifying the most frequent idioms in English language by analyzing the data coming from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), composed of more than 520 million words. The study involved writing a special script using Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) language which resulted in the development of five idiom lists, each containing 50 most frequently used idioms in each one of the five genres in COCA including academic, fiction, spoken, newspaper, and magazine along with their frequency of occurrences. Comparison was then made across the mentioned five genres. It was found that the spoken genre included more idioms whereas the academic genre was the least idiomatic. Furthermore, various levels of overlap was found among different genres. The least and the highest levels of overlap was found between the academic and fiction genres and between the magazine and newspaper genres respectively. The academic genre had more overlap with the newspaper and magazine genres. The findings can benefit EFL materials developers, teachers, and learners in recognizing and including frequently-used authentic idioms in language classrooms and textbooks. |
topic |
corpus of contemporary american english (coca) efl frequency list idioms materials development |
url |
https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_24238_d247a71eb2906e5271d5d9ac5cff5680.pdf |
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