Chapter 4 of 10All chapters
Chapter 4 of 10
Learning them
Context beats lists.
How they stick
Meeting an idiom in a real situation, with the reaction it produces, teaches the meaning and the register together. Lists teach the words and not the appropriateness.
- Note who used it, to whom, and how formal the setting was.
- Learn to recognise many and use few; misuse is more noticeable than absence.
Register
Some idioms are neutral, some jocular, some rude. Getting the meaning right and the tone wrong is the most common learner error.