If you want to know the English language well you should constantly get your vocabulary bigger. And, it goes without saying; you should include the idioms in your vocabulary. The speech without idioms seems not to be quite English. But in English the idioms are very numerous. It is impossible to analyze and learn all of them. So I decided to begin with the animal idioms.
The purpose of my investigation is improving my knowledge of English with the help of animal idioms.
The tasks of my investigation is:
To collect and analyze the English animal idioms, to compare their literally translation and real meaning;
To find Russian equivalents to them;
To find out the level of understanding of idioms among our schoolchildren;
To find out if they use the English idioms in their speech;
To prepare the product for a practical usage while learning the English idioms.
Starting my investigation I put two hypotheses:
The first: We can understand the meaning of the idioms only by finding out their origin.
The second: If schoolchildren know the origin of English idioms, they will understand them better and will start to use them oftener that will make their speech brighter and more interesting.
The relevance of my project is in the fact that English now is very important but the motivation to learning it is not high among the pupils of our school. I`m sure, my work will help our children to realize the importance of knowing the English language.
At the beginning of my work I found out the meaning of the notion “idiom”. And I learnt that it is an undivided expression which has the meaning that does not coincide with the meaning of the words in it.
For example, the idiom “a whale of time” is literally translated into the Russian language as «кит времени», but the real meaning of this letter combination is «to have a fun».
There are many types of classification of idioms. But when we compare the English and the Russian idioms we can divide them into three groups.
The first group includes the idioms that have the same construction and meaning in both languages.
For example,
A dark horse - - an unknown candidate
To take the bull by the horns
Curiosity killed the cat
A wise owl
A wolf in sheep's clothing –
These idioms are gathered in the application number 1.
The 2nd group of idioms includes the expressions that have the similar structure and meaning with Russian idioms but the animals in these expressions are different. The part of a Russian hard-working bee, for example, in the English idiom plays an eager beaver; and our whistling crayfish turns into a flying pig.
These idioms are collected in the application number 2.
The third group of idioms is the most interesting. They don`t match with Russian ones. We can`t translate them into Russian literally. We can only find the Russian equivalents to them. As a rule, these idioms have an interesting origin. For example,
the English phrase «It’s raining cats and dogs» is translated as “дождь из кошек и собак”. Its meaning is “It`s raining heavily”. The thing is in the fact that in the 15th century the English covered the roves with a lot of hay. This stuff kept warmth very well and dogs, cats and other small animals liked to sit in those roves. While it was raining heavily the animals slipped and fell down. So the English started to associate heavy rains and falling cats and dogs. So the idiom “it’s raining cats and dogs” was born.
You can find the idioms of this kind in the application number 3.
To get an answer to the question if our schoolchildren know and use the English idioms, I made a research and found out that among 65 pupils 83% could translate the idioms but only 5 and half per cent of them knew the meaning of those idioms. And it`s a pity, but our pupils don`t use these expressions in the conversations.
To help the pupils to remember the English idioms, I decided to make “A guide-book over the English idioms”. I`m sure this guide-book will help those who want to know English well.
Having analyzed the results of my investigations, I`ve come to the conclusion:
Learning of the idioms is a very important part of learning the foreign language because
It helps to understand the national history;
It helps to understand the speaker;
It helps make the speech bright and emotional.
CONCLUSION
In the result of my researches the first hypothesis has found only the partial approval. In fact, every idiom has its own origin but the meaning of many idioms is clear without knowing of their origin. The second hypothesis has found the full approval. It`s quite true, if schoolchildren know the origin of English idioms, they will understand them better and will start to use them oftener that will make their speech brighter and more interesting.
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