engleski

Idioms as an effective mechanism in the development of fluent speech

Phraseological expressions or preformed lexical units stored in the mental lexicon, are multi-word lexical units, characterized by figurativeness, expressiveness and stylistic features. These complex linguistic units do not only represent the art of figurative speech, but also reflect the linguistic and intercultural communication competences of the speaker. In the existing scientific literature, it is stated that speakers of a foreign language (L2) use these pre-formed linguistic units, but with a lower degree of variability compared to native speakers in the same communication situations. In other words, speakers in a foreign language rely more on choosing the same lexical/formulaic constructions and are less inclined to use different phrases, unlike native speakers. Mastery of figurative and formulaic language is an extremely important factor in shaping fluent speech. Namely, the adoption of formulaic expressions is a developmental phenomenon, and the ultimate goal is the transition from controlled and slower to automated and faster language processing. In addition, the results of modern research indicate a correlation between the frequency and variety of applied lexical units and the level of language proficiency, whereby higher levels of foreign language proficiency include greater frequency and greater variety in the application of these lexemes. However, although speakers at the highest level of language proficiency use them almost as often as native speakers, L2 speakers still use a significantly smaller repertoire of different phraseological expressions. The conducted research aimed to determine the extent to which students of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Split know and use idioms that express the characteristics of the speech process and articulation and their equivalents in English. These are phrases that contain the lexeme tongue as the most important speech organ, and which vividly depict fluent speech, but also difficulties in speech or pronunciation. The conclusions derived from the analysis of the questionnaire indicate a need for a more systematic approach to the processing of phraseological units in the process of learning and teaching a foreign language and their implementation in teaching materials that include cross-linguistic and cross-cultural aspects of the comparison of the language communities to which they belong. Also, the results of the analysis suggest that explicit teaching of idioms over a longer period would result in qualitative and quantitative changes. Furthermore, the results indicate the necessity of active teaching of idioms as an effective mechanism in the development of fluent speech.

figurativeness, fluency, phraso-didactics, pragmatic competence

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