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Traditionally, learners acquire English idioms through rote-learning. However, this approach fails to capture the fact that learners often get important clues from context. In addition, studies in cognitive linguistics have shown that such processes as mental imagery and etymological elaboration incorporating the notion of source domain may also assist learners in decoding the meaning of idioms. It is indisputable that contextual clues, mental imagery, and etymological elaboration are all valuable learning tools since they promote better understanding of idioms. Yet, it is often beyond students’ ability to portray an accurate mental picture and search for the origin of an idiom all by themselves. Audio-visual aids like movies can save the day for students since they provide aural, visual, and kinesic signals as well as the contextualized input of authentic material. This paper recounts the results of teaching English idioms in a Korean college with the use of the movie The American President (Reiner, 1995) and, through sets of tests and surveys, shows that the students relied mostly on the teacher’s explanations (43.4%) and guessing from context (33.4%). The survey also shows that watching movies greatly increases students’ ability to predict the meaning of idioms. |
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