This article first appeared in TESOL Journal, Volume 6, Number 4, pgs. 621–658. TESOL members can access all issues for free here. To become a member of TESOL, please click here, and to purchase articles, please visit Wiley-Blackwell. © TESOL International Association.

From A to Z and every other idiom in between, idioms have their origins in the fabric of human communication. Peculiar to a language, these forms of expression—from the ancient to the most recent—owe their creation to the inventive workings of human thought and language evolution. They posses extraordinary communicative effectiveness and rhetorical power yet convey complex realities and human behavior with the help of simple but colorful, and very powerful, figures of speech that are to a large extent frozen in time (Cutler, 1982). Each imageable-rich figure, in turn, conveys a meaning that cannot be deduced from the ordinary meanings of the words in it, that is, from the dictionary definitions of the individual words comprising it. The sum total of an idiom's individual parts as in to + take + the + bull + by + the + horns does not lead one to the figurative meaning of that idiom (to take decisive action in a difficult situation). Said simply, an idiom does not mean what it literally states. To infer its figurative meaning, reading between the lines becomes obligatory despite the blurred lines from time to time. Understanding this process of idiomatic transition has resulted in a great many empirical investigations and pedagogical discussions.

Despite all the emerging theoretical accounts of idioms to date, little attention has been paid to teaching and learning idioms in the English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classroom, anecdotal evidence aside. Developing idiomatic competence among English language learners (ELLs) remains a formidable challenge still. Addressing this challenge, this article advances an integrated theoretical and methodological framework for developing idiomatic competence in the ESOL classroom and beyond. Central to this enterprise is the description of how the information presented herein can be translated into specific pedagogic propositions worth pursuing. To this end, I first present ESOL practitioners with valuable insights, which they can then use to reach curricular decisions befitting their particular classroom context. This provides a position from which the consequences of much research effort and interpretation may yet be clarified and translated into best teaching practices. Where appropriate, gaps in research efforts are appraised and discussed. Finally, I summarize the nature of the above into eleven evaluative measures in an effort to validate learners' concerted attempts at developing idiomatic competence, albeit in different frameworks and with different levels of success.

The overall aim of this article, therefore, is not to provide a unitary framework of theory and pedagogy, but rather to ponder the descriptive information deemed pertinent in testing the waters of said pragmatic account. Throughout, it will be argued that, as learners move through higher levels of education and proficiency, instruction must encourage students to learn idioms in a more explicit and systematic way than presently applied if they are to correctly develop idiomatic competence in the English language and culture.

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This article first appeared in TESOL Journal, 6, 621–658. For permission to use text from this article, please go to Wiley-Blackwell and click on "Permissions" under "About This Journal."
doi: 10.1002/tesj.230