Pantomime as a Teaching Method for Successful English Idiom Acquisition

Jelena Ilić Plauc, Selma Kešetović

Abstract


This paper presents a real, modern and effective way of acquiring English idiomatic expressions, which are a relevant and elementary part of English. The former ways of idiom acquisition led to the belief that idioms are boring and that they represent a special category which should be memorized by heart. As such, idiom acquisition presented a difficulty and a learning obstacle for high school students and English language students alike. This paper was produced as a result of this need, in order to find a good and effective model of idiom acquisition that would facilitate students' long-term memory and successful idiom usage. At the same time, this paper aims to find a sustainable model which could be efficiently applied within the teaching process from generation to generation. Therefore, it suggests paralinguistic tricks as a learning tool which seems to closely correspond to the latest teaching strategies and foreign language learning styles. Indeed, language and pantomime are two interdependent systems that affect each other and are in constant correlation. Pantomime greatly reinforces the sensorimotor representation of an idiom, which results in its successful long-term memory acquisition in foreign language learning.

Keywords


idioms; pantomime; teaching method; paralinguistic features; gesture; motivation; memory;

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References


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