Thursday, October 11, 2012

Idiom Collages


It wasn’t until I started teaching that I found myself analyzing language and trying to find creative ways to pass language on to my (mostly) ESL students. What I’ve realized is that todays’ speech is full of figurative language, idioms, colloquialisms and slang. These things make English seem complex, confusing, and difficult to learn for students. But the students aren’t always the only ones struggling with it; teaching English can be just as daunting.

In an effort to bring fun back into learning English, I decided to try something new with teaching idioms. We started the lesson by looking at some common idioms and their meanings then broke down the difference between literal and figurative meanings. Later we chose our favorite idiom and made a contrasting collage from magazine clippings to explain the meaning of the idioms. Not only did they learn some new expressions, they had a blast bring those expressions to life. Once the collages were finished, each student shared what they created. If you have any other ideas of how you’ve taught figurative language, feel free to leave a comment for me. Thanks and have a great weekend!

No comments:

Post a Comment