3

Some background information: I am an EFL(English as a Foreign Language learner).

I lived for several years abroad and attended English-only schools when I was little but repatriated to find the English education to be focused exclusively on grammar and not on semantics or pragmatics -- no emphasis on etymology or idiomatic expressions. Recently, I found that such a thing as a "dictionary of idioms and phrasal verbs" existed. The first of the kind appeared in 1987 published by McGraw-Hill which is quite recent given the lengthy history of other kinds of dictionaries. It is still odd considering the fact that I received higher education in the US in addition to the experience abroad in childhood to have finally discovered this book after all these years!

My question is: is this kind of book the purview of ESL education or do Americans get taught this material as part of their curriculum?

Tommi
  • 3,492
  • 1
  • 11
  • 37
economics
  • 39
  • 1
  • There are probably better sites than this for good answers to your question. From my own experience I can say that ESL curricula are much more likely to cover idiomatic English than 'English for native speakers' curricula. Popular English textbooks in the US, such as Warriners/Holt, are focused on grammar and composition. The two such books I own have no mention at all of idioms. But idioms may be covered tangentially in classes on English literature, the second fundamental aspect of English language teaching for native speakers. – Shoe Feb 25 '24 at 08:43
  • Americans are not systematically taught idioms and phrasal verbs in elementary school or in high school. They are integral to the language and we learn them just by being immersed in it. If anything, just the opposite is true: in some schools Latinate verbs are taught and students are encouraged to use them instead of the homely phrasal verb wherever possible to make their writing appear more erudite. How did you pull that off? -> How did you succeed in doing that? –  Feb 25 '24 at 10:51
  • The first such work I know of is Cowie and Mackin's two volume 'Oxford dictionary of current idiomatic English', first published in 1975 (later retitled and edited by Ayto). // The whole issue of 'phrasal verbs', including terminology, is far from resolved. The term 'phrasal verb' itself has conflicting definitions†, so many avoid it. But the fact that the string look up in 'look up a date' has a far stronger cohesion than in 'look up a road' is clear. I'd say 'look up' in the research sense is a multi-word verb, a single lexeme. Others might not ... and in some cases, I couldn't say. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 25 '24 at 13:49
  • †There are many threads on ELU discussing the 'phrasal verb' issue, and these include the analysis of trickier examples (unary, or verb + preposition[al phrase]?). //// As for the teaching requirements, these strings outnumber simplex verb usages, so they should certainly be addressed ... but perhaps at the 'he took off President Nixon' = 'he impersonated President Nixon' (and mention of polysemy; 'the plane took off') level. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 25 '24 at 13:56
  • 1
    [Are American taught x, not Do Americans get taught]. No because phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions are learned through one's environment (caregivers, home, school). – Lambie Feb 25 '24 at 15:03
  • "Do Americans get taught ____?" is in an informal register but it is perfectly idiomatic, standard American English. – TimR Feb 25 '24 at 22:35
  • Americans and English people are not taught English, so language learning does not apply to them. They already know the language. They learn to read and write (in primary school), then they take English which involves reading and writing at a higher level. – Lambie Feb 26 '24 at 15:38
  • Oftentimes such phrases appear as part of the headword of a normal dictionary. For example, if you look up the word 'cat' then in good unabridged dictionaries I'd expect to find expressions listed with a gloss such as 'more than one way to skin a cat' (there's more than one way to solve a problem) or 'to let the cat out of the bag' (to reveal a secret prematurely). – Brandin Feb 28 '24 at 07:05
  • @Lambie The "are you taught" looks like more elegant prose on paper, but in the spoken language (English/American) the form "do you get ..." is more natural in the spoken language -- we would pronounce it as one word, more like "d'y'get taught ..." when speaking. But to properly pronounce "Are you taught?" in speech seems to me to require more concious effort (The initial ARE must be slightly more stressed than the "you" for it to really make sense as a question, and contracting those two words is awkward due to the adjacent vowels). – Brandin Feb 28 '24 at 07:35
  • @Brandin We are dealing here with written language. This isn't a water cooler interchange. In any event, not everything is contracted in speech. – Lambie Feb 28 '24 at 13:00

1 Answers1

2

First, phrasal verbs. No, they are not taught specifically and that term is never introduced. Phrasal verbs, for example "The professor called off the exam" or "Shut up!", are essentially vocabulary items, and lean somewhat towards the informal. Such things are rarely taught to native speakers as they are learned as a matter of course. And frankly most native speakers of English learn barely any grammar at all - most technical grammar concepts they learn when they take a foreign (to English) language. Native English speakers do get instructed in some vocabulary of English but those are more erudite words, like 'despondent' or 'sagacious' or 'calumny' as these are somewhat rare and unlikely to be spoken in most people's homes.

As to idioms, that is a bit more variable but also depends on the informal/formal continuum. An idiom like 'at home' (which is an idiom to most non-native speakers of English because of the unlikely missing 'the' is not taught at all in school because it is picked up naturally by a native speaker. But an idiom like 'A rolling stone gathers no moss' has history and culture behind it so it may be taught (to late elementary students).

So the real answer to both parts would be no, neither are taught to native English speakers, but with some exceptions.

Mitch
  • 121
  • 2
  • This is another poor question. They aren't "taught English" per se at all, they already know it. – Lambie Feb 26 '24 at 15:39
  • @Lambie Correct, no one is -taught- grammar of their native language. But it is an excellent question. If you don't know, you don't know, but you don't know that. If you didn't grow up/elementary school in another language, you don't know what other people would do. Maybe in French they do teach the masculine/feminine of every noun every day until graduation? How would I know whether they do that unless I ask? (Spoiler: they don't teach that (short exception - maybe for that handful of 'h aspiré' that French people sometimes make mistakes on.)) – Mitch Feb 26 '24 at 16:21
  • In France (apart from code switching, like here) the big deal is spelling, especially the agreement of person and gender. To that end, the French use dictée (dictations) 'coz you can't hear them. For example: les femmes ennuyées et les hommes ennuyés. That difference is not heard in sentences such as Les femmes sont ennuyées versus Les hommes sont ennuyés. [bored or bothered or annoyed]. Other times you can hear the s but not the é and ée. You have to know la femme is feminine and l'homme is masculine. – Lambie Feb 27 '24 at 15:56