| dc.description.abstract | Idioms are one vital component every language around the world owns which entails an
intended meaning behind them. Idioms and idiomaticity enable one to develop figurative
competency, a component of communicative competency, which ultimately enables one
to master overall language competency. Since there are different varieties of the English
language, there are idioms from such varieties that can be used to identify the culture of
the language and any hidden meanings. When teaching English as a Second Language,
it is essential to expose the second language (L2) learners to such idioms from varieties
of English. A corpus-based textbook analysis was done using the English grade 10 and
11 textbooks from the local syllabus in Sri Lanka to determine to what extent second
language acquisition through idioms is supported by these texts. The findings indicate
that idiom usage is very confined in English textbooks for grades 10 and 11, and that
all those idioms that are included are of one specific variety-British English-and are not
from different varieties. The study’s findings unambiguously support the Sri Lankan
L2 learners’ minimal exposure to idiomaticity. This talk will highlight these findings and
propose improvements that can be made to the syllabus to increase learner understanding
of idioms | en_US |
