Ngành: Tiếng anh thương mại Môn: Từ vựng học Chủ đề: Những khó khăn của sinh viên trong việc hiểu thành ngữ. I. INTRODUCTION 1, Proposed research topic Our objective is to finding out the difficulty of Business English students intake 55 in idiom comprehension and carry out best solutions for them to improve their knowledge about idiomatic expression. 2, Background Idioms are part and parcel of mastering any language. They are a prominent natural part of our everyday discourse since they reflect cultural and linguistic boundaries enabling communication between different cultures. Traditionally, idioms are described as fixed expression as phrases or sentences whose figurative meaning is not clear from the literal meaning of their individual constituents. Many scholars confirmed that idioms can never be translated literally, word by word translation should be avoided. Language learners; therefore, find idioms hard to understand, and this is not surprising. In deed, to be Business student, the usage of English idiom in study and daily life is even more vital. They have to communicate, study, and work in English environment, so, using right variant of English idiom is very necessary. For those reasons, perceiving the meaning of idiom is definitely important to Business student. However, like many language learners, they also encounter trouble in comprehending idiom. This paper; therefore, attempts to find out difficulties faced by Business English students intake 55 and focuses on some solutions to use idiom effectively. 3, Rationale Despite recent development in the field of translation theory and application, idiomatic expressions are still considered as a serious challenge for translators as well as foreign teachers or learners. The difficulty of language learners is that idiom has no standard. In National Economic University, although teaching methods have been advanced and students have more opportunity to learn and practice English, Business English students are not good at translating and using idioms. So we do this research in order to find out the difficulties of Business English students and then suggest some methods to comprehend the meaning of idiom. 4, Purposes This research is derived from three basic purposes. The first purpose is discovering the situation in using idiom of Business English students. Second is finding out difficulties, and the last is giving some solutions to help them learn idiom effectively. 5, Scope This research focuses on the difficulties of Business student when translating and using idiom in terms of word order, structure and context. The interviewees we aim to are the K55 students of Business Department at National Economic University. We choose Business English K55 students because being intake 55, we can realistically and strongly identify their ability and partly recognize their difficulty during studying process in class. Hence, the accuracy of information collected will be expected to be high. 6, Research question Regarding on that purpose, we will find the answer for three research questions below: 1, Can Business English students perceive the meaning of idiom? 2, What are difficulties of Business English students when using idiom? 3, How to improve the idiom’ s understanding of Business English students? 7, Research method We plan to use quantitative and qualitative research methods together. We will get out questionnaires to gather statistical data about responses then back this up and research in more depth by interviewing. Moreover, the data from the book, journals, internet and other researches related to the topic was used as secondary data for the research.
Trang 1NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEAPRTMENT OF BUSINESS ENGLISH
LEXICOLOGY
THE DIFFICULTY OF BUSINESS ENGLISH STUDENTS INTAKE 55 IN
UNDERSTANDING IDIOMS
Group members: Đào Thị Ánh
Lê Thị Thu Hiền Nguyễn Thị Lý Phạm Thị Thu Tường Thị Quỳnh Trang April, 2016
Trang 2Tables of Content
1, Proposed research topic
Our objective is to finding out the difficulty of Business English students intake 55 in idiom comprehension and carry out best solutions for them to improve their knowledge about idiomatic expression
2, Background
Idioms are part and parcel of mastering any language They are a prominent natural part of our everyday discourse since they reflect cultural and linguistic boundaries enabling communication between different cultures Traditionally, idioms are described as fixed expression as phrases or sentences whose figurative meaning is not clear from the literal meaning of their individual constituents Many scholars confirmed that idioms can never be translated literally, word by word translation should be avoided Language learners; therefore, find idioms hard to understand, and this is not surprising
In deed, to be Business student, the usage of English idiom in study and daily life is even more vital They have to communicate, study, and work in English environment, so, using right variant
of English idiom is very necessary For those reasons, perceiving the meaning of idiom is definitely important to Business student However, like many language learners, they also encounter trouble in comprehending idiom This paper; therefore, attempts to find out difficulties faced by Business English students intake 55 and focuses on some solutions to use idiom effectively
Trang 33, Rationale
Despite recent development in the field of translation theory and application, idiomatic expressions are still considered as a serious challenge for translators as well as foreign teachers
or learners The difficulty of language learners is that idiom has no standard In National Economic University, although teaching methods have been advanced and students have more opportunity to learn and practice English, Business English students are not good at translating and using idioms So we do this research in order to find out the difficulties of Business English students and then suggest some methods to comprehend the meaning of idiom
4, Purposes
This research is derived from three basic purposes The first purpose is discovering the situation
in using idiom of Business English students Second is finding out difficulties, and the last is giving some solutions to help them learn idiom effectively
5, Scope
This research focuses on the difficulties of Business student when translating and using idiom in terms of word order, structure and context The interviewees we aim to are the K55 students of Business Department at National Economic University We choose Business English K55 students because being intake 55, we can realistically and strongly identify their ability and partly recognize their difficulty during studying process in class Hence, the accuracy of information collected will be expected to be high
6, Research question
Regarding on that purpose, we will find the answer for three research questions below:
1, Can Business English students perceive the meaning of idiom?
2, What are difficulties of Business English students when using idiom?
3, How to improve the idiom’ s understanding of Business English students?
7, Research method
We plan to use quantitative and qualitative research methods together We will get out questionnaires to gather statistical data about responses then back this up and research in more
Trang 4depth by interviewing Moreover, the data from the book, journals, internet and other researches related to the topic was used as secondary data for the research
II THEORICAL REVIEW
1. Definition of idiom
According to Cambridge dictionary, an idiom (also called idiomatic expression) is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning conventionally understood by native speakers This meaning is different from the literal meaning of the idiom’s individual elements
In other word, idioms don’t mean exactly what the words say They have, however, hidden meaning Richards and Schmidt (2002) also defines an idiom as an expression whose function is
as an isolated unit and whose meaning also cannot be worked out from its separate parts For example, the meaning of the idiom “have bitten off more than you can chew” is that you have tried to do something which is too difficult for you This meaning has nothing to do with the meanings of the separate words of which idiom is composed
2. Structure of idiom
Most idioms are fixed in their grammatical structure For example, idiom “to sit on the fence” cannot become “to sit on a fence.” Other idioms are the result of a change in grammatical structure and would generally be considered to be incorrect For example, “to be broken” literally means that something is broken; meanwhile, “to be broke” is grammatically incorrect but it has the idiomatic meaning of having no money There can also change in nouns, pronouns or in the verb tenses For example, “I sat on the fence and did not give my opinion.” Adjectives and adverbs can also be added to an idiomatic phrase For example, “the politician has been sitting squarely in the middle of the fence since the election.” That is the reason why it is difficult to isolate the actual idiomatic expression and find out the meaning
3. Factors that affect idiom comprehension
Trang 5Many factors have an effect on the comprehension of idiom in term of the processing speed and understandability Some of these factors include the familiarity, transparency, and context of use
of the idiom
4. Familiarity
Idiom familiarity is typically defined as how frequently an idiom is encountered in a language community Subjective ratings of idiom familiarity are usually obtained from members of the language community An example of a more familiar English idiom is “pain in the neck”, while a less familiar idiom is “paddle his own canoe.”
5. Transparency
Idiom transparency can be considered as the “literalness” of an idiom and how easy it is to understand an idiom based on the words it contains Depending on their degree of transparency, idiom can be classified into three categories : decomposable, abnormally decomposable and non-decomposable
6. Context of use
The effects of context on idiom comprehension are very important It was found that people understand idiomatic expression more accurately when they are shown in informative contexts than when they are presented in isolation When they are encountered out of context, people tended to interpret idioms literally The ability to use contextual information in language processing has also been found to influence people’ s performance in idiom comprehension
III MAJOR FINDINGS
In the major findings of the research, we will present and analyze the results of our study The concept of this part includes 3 following points All points were analyzed statistically to get the findings of the study First, we mention the understanding about idioms of Business English students, showing how important they feel about understanding idioms Secondly, we refer to the usage of idiom of Business English students, the findings show what the main difficulties that those students encounter in using the idiomatic expressions and also reveal what strategies were used Last but not least, the significance of comprehending and using idioms is addressed
Trang 6The understanding about idioms of Business English students.
Figure 1: The percentage of students know the word “idiom”
According to the result of our research, most Business English students (94%) said that they know this word and there are 6% of them answered no However when we take an example for them, they all know what it means This is easy to understand because after that they give the reason that they forgot it as a result of not using it regularly
Figure 2: Sources students usually catch idioms
It is widely agreed among students with 37% of them found that idioms are caught more usually
in the exam than when they are located in other sources Chosen by 31% of respondents, newspaper is the second highest source Communication, however, is less popular source in which students catch idioms (27%) The result shows that idioms are still less popularly used in real life than academic environment
Figure 3: students are often taught idioms by whom
It is worth noticing that the large number of interviewees (68%) answered they are taught idioms
by teachers Besides, only 15% of them said they mainly learning by themselves 12% of answerers learn idioms from their friends by doing homework together Just 5% students said they learn idioms in others way such as chatting, translating It can be seen that teacher is one of the most important factor affect student’s knowledge about idioms Students mostly rely on their teachers and still not active in their learning
Trang 7Clearly, the average quantity of idioms students know is from 10- 20 idioms, where the highest quantity ranged more than 20 idioms chosen by 67% students, the lowest quantity of less than 10 idioms It is notably that no one knows less than 10 idioms Overall, most of students still lack much knowledge about idioms that will be a disadvantage in the future
Figure 5: Important level of understanding idioms by BE student
The chart above shows the evaluation of Business English Students about the importance of understanding idioms Surprisingly, the result is up to 74% of students believe that understanding idioms is not important Only 26% in total of them think that it is essential to perceive the meaning of idioms This can be explained that, in fact, both teachers and students rarely use idioms, even in common communication or academic lessons Therefore, majority of students answered like that However, according to experts, understanding idioms plays an important role
in communicating with native speakers because they regularly use idioms in situations The next finding that we have got is about the students’ feeling about understanding idioms
Figure 6: Difficult level of understanding idioms.
It can be seen that most of students find it hard to understanding idioms 77% of respondents negatively identified that understanding idioms is really a difficult task for them while 19 % feel neutral On the other hand, the smallest percentage refers to those who feel easy about understanding idioms They were only about 4% of the total number of participants Beside subjectively reasons from students themselves, other reasons are clearly shown by the result of the next question about the difficulties students have to face to understanding idioms
Trang 8Figure 7: The reasons why understanding idioms is difficult.
The result determines the factors that lead to the difficulty to the participants to understand idioms that can be vital for future study of future job of Business English students Most of the students (55%) pointed out that they encounter problems when they don’t understand the context This can be considered as the most important factors behind the use of idiomatic expressions as
if students understand the context, they can get easier to comprehend idioms More than 10% of them find it difficult because of lacking knowledge about vocabulary so they cannot guess the metaphorical meaning from equivalent words in that idiom The next answer shows that culture also plays a crucial role in understanding idioms as the challenge of different culture was revealed by 30% of total This can be easy to understand because students cannot have a comprehensive knowledge as a result of diversified cultures Apart from these, there is 5 % of the total number of interviewees who refer to other reasons such as idioms are not taught well in class…
The above finding shows that context plays a crucial role in idiom understanding of BE students intake k55, especially when they do not know its meaning The result illustrates that when the idioms are put in a specific context, 70 percentage of them understand while no one guesses their meaning when they appear alone Base on the situation the idioms are put in, students can have a
Trang 9gerneral background information about the context As a result, they are easily able to guess its meaning
IV RECOMMENDATION
4.1 Difficulties of BE students intake 55 in understanding the idioms
According to Cooper (1999), “idiom study presents a special language problem for all language learners because the figurative meaning is unpredictable The result of another study stated that mastering idioms and the ability to use them in the written and the spoken discourse is considered as a sign towards proficiency.” Linguists used to believe that idioms were completely arbitrary: that is, you could not guess their meaning from the words they consist of When doing a small research in BE students intake 55, the result brings the report no surprise as linguists used to believe Over 80% in the total interviwees say that they have trouble in understanding idiomatic expressions in English.Consequently, the only way BE students master idioms is to learn them by heart without thinking According to the research, BE students intake
55 find it difficult to understand and remember idioms in terms of vocabulary, context and culture
• Idioms and Vocabulary
Vocabulary is not the remarkable section affecting student’s idioms understanding as in each idiom, the number of vocabulary is trivial Only 5% students have trouble with it However, it can also build barriers for whose vocabularies are limited The findings of this study show that student who get ready for the IELTS test are better in understanding idioms than students who do not In the fact that, to cope with IELTS test, student have to prepare and remember more vocabularies Moreover, the more idioms students use in their essay, the higher mark they will get
When being asked about the meaning of the idiom “hedge your bets’’, students who know the meaning of each word can guess its whole meaning “ hedge” means ‘’a fence or boundary formed by closely growing bushes or shrubs’’ and “bets” means ‘’an act of risking a sum of money on the outcome of a future event” Being competent in these words, BE students can guess its whole meaning “to not take any risks”
Trang 10• Idioms and Culture
According to Cooper (1999), “idiom study presents a special language problem for all language learners because the figurative meaning is unpredictable The result of another study stated that mastering idioms and the ability to use them in the written and the spoken discourse is considered as a sign towards proficiency.”
In general, these idioms can not usually simply be translated word-for-word from one language
to another: their precise form and wording will often differ across languages As a result, to comprehend the whole meaning of idiomatic expression, students have to understand its home culture For example, when student are asked to translate the idiom “a leading light”, they cannot translate word by word such as a- leading- light In this situation, understanding the English culture is of high importance The findings indicate that idioms were difficult for BE student intake k55 because of their lack of the cultural background behind idioms Besides that, the responses regarding the difficulties were that the idioms as well as the USA culture are not taught well in the class, so student cannot have a comprehensive knowledge According a research made by Frank Boers in MED Magazine – Issue 49 – February 2008, English has a lot of idioms that are derived from the following domains:
Idioms derived from sailing:
clear the decks to first finish a job completely
a leading light a good example to follow
be on an even keel to make calm, steady progress
Idioms derived from war:
stick to your guns to refuse to change your opinion
fight a losing battle to be unlikely to succeed
be in the front line to have an important role
Idioms derived from entertainment (the theatre, the circus etc):
waiting in the wings ready to act when needed
a balancing act a difficult compromise