AN INVESTIGATION OF MOST FREQUENTLY USED

ENGLISH IDIOMS: AN ANALYSIS AMONG A

PUBLISHED RESOURCE, COCA AND L2 LEARNER

CORPUS

BY

MR. SOMKIAT LIMSIRORAT

AN INDEPENDENT PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL

FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE

OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

LANGUAGE INSTITUTE

THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

ACADEMIC YEAR 2018

COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

Ref. code: 25616021042335LDE

AN INVESTIGATION OF MOST FREQUENTLY USED

ENGLISH IDIOMS: AN ANALYSIS AMONG A

PUBLISHED RESOURCE, COCA AND L2 LEARNER

CORPUS

BY

MR. SOMKIAT LIMSIRORAT

AN INDEPENDENT PAPER STUDY SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL

FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE

OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

LANGUAGE INSTITUTE

THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

ACADEMIC YEAR 2018

COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

Ref. code: 25616021042335LDE

(1)

ABSTRACT

English idioms are an important part of English language which ESL/EFL

learners should master since fluency in using the idioms reflects language proficiency

level and effectiveness in communication of the learners. One important challenge in

teaching idiom is which idioms should be selected and taught in a classroom first, due

to the fact that most idiom materials are primarily based on intuition and some of

them include a substantial number of seldom-used idioms in real life. Using a corpus

can provide empirical data to support decision making on idiom selection. Thus, this

corpus-based study aimed at identifying the most frequently used English idioms from

a published resource for teaching and learning by using COCA as a tool and further

investigating the idioms used among ESL/EFL learners of Asian backgrounds using a

learner corpus, ICNALE. This study obtained a list of the top 50 most frequently used

English idioms, one that teachers can use as a basis for their idiom-related lessons. It

also reveals interesting findings; e.g. the usage of idioms found in COCA was

remarkably greater than that in ICNALE (93.8% vs. 3.7%). Despite minimal usage of

idioms, ESL/EFL learners seem to be aware of the usage of idioms as the idioms they

used are close to the top 5 and 10 frequently used idioms of native English speakers.

Keywords: English idioms, Corpus, Teaching idioms, Frequently used idioms,

ESL/EFL learners, L2 learners

Independent Study Paper Title AN INVESTIGATION OF MOST

FREQUENTLY USED ENGLISH IDIOMS: AN

ANALYSIS AMONG A PUBLISHED

RESOURCE, COCA AND L2 LEARNER

Author Mr. Somkiat Limsirorat

Degree Master of Arts

Major Field/Faculty/University English Language Teaching

Language Institute

Thammasat University

Independent Study Paper Advisor

Academic Year

Associate Professor Pornsiri Singhapreecha, PhD.

2018

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I wish to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my

advisor, Associate Professor Pornsiri Singhapreecha, Ph.D., who spent hours and

hours working with me, and gave me timely advice, comments and suggestions to a

very great extent which allowed me to accomplish this independent study.

Besides my advisor, I would like to thank Assistant Professor Upsorn

Tawilapakul, chairperson, for her insightful and constructive feedback during my

independent study defenses.

I also owe many thanks to all my teachers for their intellectual knowledge, my

fellow classmates for their continuous help, support and encouragement, and LITU

staff for their arrangement of class schedules and everything throughout my graduate

years of study.

Last but not least, I would like to thank everyone who played different roles in

my independent study journey, including those whose names were not mentioned

above. This accomplishment would not have been possible without all your support.

Mr. Somkiat Limsirorat

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT (1)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (2)

LIST OF TABLES (6)

LIST OF FIGURES (7)

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background of the Study 1

1.2 Research Questions 2

1.3 Research Objectives 2

1.4 Statement of the Problem 3

1.5 Scope of the Study 3

1.6 Significance of the Study 4

1.7 Limitation of the Study 5

1.8 Organization of the Study 5

1.9 Summary 6

CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 7

2.1 Definitions of Idioms 7

2.2 Classification of Idioms 8

2.3 Teaching of Idioms 8

2.4 Applying Idiom Research to Teaching 9

2.5 Previous Studies 10

2.6 Summary 11

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 12

3.1 Published Resources Used 12

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3.1.1 Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms 12

3.1.1 Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs 13

3.2 The Corpora Used 13

3.2.1 The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) 13

3.2.2 The International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English

(ICNALE) 14

3.2.3 A Concordance Program (AntConc) 14

3.3 Data Collection Procedure 15

3.3.1 Data Collection for the First Research Question 15

3.3.2 Data Collection for the Second Research Question 18

3.4 Summary 19

CHAPTER 4 RESULTS 20

4.1 Results of Research Question 1 20

4.2 Results of Research Question 2 23

4.3 Summary 27

CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 28

5.1 Summary of the Study 28

5.2 Summary of the Findings 28

5.3 Discussion 29

5.4 Conclusion 31

5.5 Recommendations for Future Research 31

REFERENCES 33

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A: The initial list of idioms in alphabetical order 35

APPENDIX B: List of idioms from COCA’s most to least frequency 41

BIOGRAPHY 46

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LIST OF TABLES

Tables Page

1. Initial List of Idioms and Related Data 20

2. Top 50 Most Frequently Used English Idioms in COCA 21

3. Examples of Hyphenated and Non-Hyphenated Tokens 22

4. Examples of Different Verb Form Tokens 22

5. Commonly Occurring Idioms in COCA and ICNALE and Frequency Counts 23

6. Number of Idioms with ‘Hit’ and ‘No Hit’ in COCA and ICNALE 24

7. List of Idioms found across ICNALE and COCA’s Top 5 24

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figures Page

1. Frequency counts of piece of cake in COCA 16

2. Concordance lines of piece of cake in COCA 16

3. Frequency counts of break the ice in COCA 17

4. Frequency counts of broke the ice in COCA 17

5. Frequency counts of broken the ice in COCA 17

6. Frequency counts of down-to-earth in COCA 18

7. Frequency counts of down to earth in COCA 18

8. Sample screen shot of AntConc’s search 19

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

Widely spoken throughout the world, the English language has long seen a

growing demand for learning; therefore, one should learn not only its standard

vocabulary but also its different styles of expressions such as idioms. Idioms exist in

every language, and English in particular has approximately over 10,000 of them,

some relatively current and some that have been used for more than 2,000 years

(Brenner, 2011). They are an essential part of the language and all native speakers

regularly use them in both spoken and written English; moreover, they use them

spontaneously without thinking of their figurative meaning. In order to achieve

native-like fluency and effectiveness in communication, English learners, both

learners of English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language

(EFL), need to learn and be able to use them fluently and effectively.

As Liu (2003) stressed, idioms are “a notoriously difficult” aspect for

ESL/EFL learners because of their inflexible structure, unpredictable meaning, and

fairly extensive use, but they are very useful aspect of English as they “can be a great

asset to learners in acquiring a new language” (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman,

1999, p. 39). Consequently, it is very challenging for the learners to learn and attain a

mastery of idioms. As might be seen, there are many great resources available for

idiom teaching and many teachers may considerably question where they should start,

and which idioms should be taught in a classroom. This is even more challenging and

burdensome when teachers must prepare idiom instruction and materials for teaching.

Liu (2003) indicated that one of the first important issues that always emerge

from all teachers to consider for idiom instruction is which kind of idioms should be

initially selected for teaching and in what sequence. It is quite difficult to make

principled decisions about the selection since most idioms in existing idiom teaching

and reference materials are primarily selected based on teachers’ favorites and

material writers’ intuition rather than empirical data. Therefore, their selection may

not reflect the actual use of idioms in real life situations and the teaching reference

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materials may include many seldom-used idioms while leaving out some frequently

used ones.

To determine the most frequently used idioms as an initial list for teaching,

introducing a corpus as a tool can provide empirical data for appropriate decision-

making on idiom selection for teaching. This can be supported by Biber and Conrad’s

(2001) statement that a corpus is not only valuable for providing authentic examples

of words or grammatical features in context, but it also offers a unique perspective on

the use of quantitative analyses to investigate and identify the most important

linguistic exemplars to teaching. This present study reports a corpus-based study

aimed at identifying the most frequently used English idioms from a published

resource for ESL/EFL teachers and learners as well as investigating how frequently

the learners use those idioms in real life.

1.2 Research Questions

This study attempts to explore the answers to the following questions:

1.2.1 How often do the selected English idioms from a published resource

occur in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)?

Given the answer to research question 1, only the top 50 most frequently used

English idioms in COCA will be used as a basis to investigate their

occurrences in the L2 learner corpus which leads to research question 2.

1.2.2 How frequently do the top 50 idioms above occur in an L2 learner

corpus? We have chosen the International Corpus Network of Asian

Learners of English (ICNALE) as a representative for L2 corpora. The

detailed discussion of ICNALE appears in 3.2.2.

1.3 Research Objectives

The objectives of the study were as follows:

1.3.1 To provide a comprehensive list of the top 50 most frequently used

English idioms. The researcher obtained English idioms from a

published resource and these idioms were checked for their frequencies

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in COCA. Only the top 50 most frequently occurring idioms were

chosen.

1.3.2 To investigate how frequently the above list occurs in ICNALE.

1.4 Statement of the Problem

As previously mentioned, it is a fact that idioms are difficult for L2 learners

and in the past idiom acquisition had not received much attention in L2 research

because traditionally, from what Ellis (1985) stated, the studies emphasized

grammatical system rather than the lexis. Moreover, Liu (2003) added that none of

these studies has examined which idioms one should learn first, and that the answer

may require the study of the frequency of English idioms. It is fortunate that in the

present day applied linguistics has gradually gained more attention, thanks to corpus

linguistics which has played a key role in this field of study. For this reason, the

results of this corpus-based study will help resolve the question as to which idioms

should be taught first. The list of 50 frequently used English idioms, the outcome of

this study, will be available; so will a comparison between their frequencies and those

found in a L2 learner corpus. EFL teachers can incorporate the findings of this study

into their lessons.

1.5 Scope of the study

Because of their broad definitions and various categorizations, we will exclude

idioms of the following types.

a) Variable classes

A variable class, as defined by Spears (2005), is an element, usually nouns

or pronouns, included in idiomatic expression, e.g. someone, which refers

to any person, or something, which refers to anything or object. Some

idioms are very particular as to whether they include either someone or

something. For example, play something at full blast, grease someone’s

palm, etc.

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b) Phrasal verbs

A phrasal verb consists of a verb plus one or more particles and operates

syntactically as a single unit, such as give in, put up with.

c) Interpersonal idioms

These idioms perform interactional functions and are closely associated

with politeness routines in social interactions, e.g. mind you, guess what,

etc. (Fernando, 1996).

d) Relational idioms or textual idioms

These idioms are phrases that ensure the discourse is cohesive and

coherent, for example, on the contrary, on the other hand, on the grounds

of, etc. (Fernando, 1996).

The present study focuses on idioms whose figurative meanings cannot be

inferred easily because the individual words’ normal meanings do not directly

contribute to the idiom’s overall figurative meaning; for example, play it by ear, twist

your arm, spill the beans, kick the bucket and so on.

1.6 Significance of the study

The importance of this study lies in the fact that numerous published books

and even textbooks for teaching idioms on the market do not indicate how popularly

the idioms are used. Some teachers may select idioms for teaching based on their

favorites or intuition and this can have a negative impact on what idioms teachers will

teach and learners will learn. The selection of idioms in many idiom instructions and

reference materials may not reflect any empirical data and a large number of the

idioms contained in these materials are seldom used. Thus, the idioms are relatively

useless because learners rarely encounter them in daily life.

Consequently, the results from this study will provide a comprehensive list of

idioms in an American context and serve as a useful guideline to EFL teachers when

it comes to choosing appropriate idioms for teaching, material writers, and certainly to

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ESL/EFL learners. In addition, EFL teachers will learn about a popular group of

idioms and in what sequence they should be taught in the classroom. In sum, it is

significant in terms of idiom instruction for ELT, as EFL teachers can readily

integrate the vocabulary group found in this study into their lessons.

1.7 Limitations of the study

The present study has limitations as the following:

1.7.1 The initial list of idioms in this study was extracted from only one

published resource written by one author. This results in a rather

narrow range of commonly used idioms. Expanding published

resources to those of some other authors will provide a wider range of

the idioms which may yield more insightful results.

1.7.2 The learner corpora used in this study was limited to only The

International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English

(ICNALE), which represents data of L2 learners of English from Asian

countries. Further studies may involve more diversity of L2 learner

corpora with various L1 backgrounds from western countries in order

to broaden the studies with different views on this matter.

1.8 Organization of the Study

There are five chapters in this study. Chapter 1 introduces the rationale, the

unavailability of frequently used idioms for EFL lesson, and the need to conduct this

study. Chapter 2 presents a review of studies of frequently used idioms and related

aspects to the topic. Chapter 3 explains the research methodology and procedure of

data collection based on two corpora, COCA and a learner corpus, while results are

displayed in chapter 4. The final chapter of this study gathers all of the results and

presents discussion, conclusions and future research recommendations.

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1.9 Summary

This chapter emphasizes the importance of the instruction of English idioms

for ESL/EFL learners and introduces the study’s methodology for acquiring the most

frequently used English idioms. The final list of the idioms obtained from this study

will provide a comprehensive list of the top 50 most frequently used English idioms

as a reference source for idiom instruction and material to ESL/EFL teachers, learners

and idiom material writers, as well as offering a comparison of idiom used by Asian

L2 learners and native speakers.

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CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

This chapter offers a review of the main relevant research to the present topic,

which is about the frequently used English idioms. We will utilize two corpora as an

instrument to identify the frequency of idioms. It also reviews the relevant literature,

which is organized thematically into four sections. Section 2.1 discusses the

definitions of idioms; section 2.2 presents classification of idioms; section 2.3

provides an approach to teaching of idioms; section 2.4 is discussion of idiom

research to teaching. Finally, section 2.5 presents some previous corpus-based studies

on idiom.

2.1 Definitions of Idioms

In any idiom research, the first and important question that must be asked is

“what is an idiom?” An idiom, as defined by Cambridge Dictionary Online (2018), is

“a group of words in a fixed order that have a particular meaning that is different from

the meanings of each word on its own”. In addition, an idiom, generally known as a

slang expression, a proverb, a simile, a dead metaphor or any name an “idiom” may

be called, has been defined by various researchers with different definitions based on

a variety of criteria and context. In a narrow sense, Moon (1998) refers to idioms as

multi word expressions which are not the sum of their parts, the meanings of which

cannot be inferred from the component words’ meanings. For some scholars, in a

broad sense, the term is more or less inclusive; for example, Cooper (1998), Katz and

Postal (1963) have included idioms as individual words that are used metaphorically.

Yet other scholars, for instance Simpson and Mendis (2003), summarized these

definitions and identified an idiom as “a group of words that occur in a more or less

fixed phrase whose overall meaning cannot be predicted by analyzing the meaning of

its constituent parts”.

What constitutes an idiom is, thus, a decision up to the researchers’ choice. As

Fernando (1996: p. 40) stated, the task of “identifying idiom is simply an attempt to

differentiate and label one class of common expressions with specific functions from

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others, on the basis of criteria which strike the analyst as being the most illuminating.”

For that reason, “different analysts will come up with somewhat different criteria and

different identifications”, was a pertinent remark by Fernando, which we will adopt in

the current study.

2.2 Classification of Idioms

Classification of idiom also varies at the discretion of the researchers because

many of them have classified the idiom in various ways. Based on Fernando’s (1996)

classification, idioms can be simply divided into three categories: pure idiom, semi-

idiom and literal idiom. The definition of each category is described as follows:

A pure idiom is a type of idiom in which there is no connection between the

meaning of individual constituents and the meaning of the whole idiom. It is always

non-literal and said to be opaque. For example, spill the beans is recognized as pure

idiom, because its true meaning has nothing related to the beans. In fact, its meaning

as the idiom is ‘commit an indiscretion’.

A semi-idiom is said to have one or more literal components and at least one

with a non-literal meaning. For example, fat chance (a very poor chance) is a semi-

idiom, in which fat is non-literal, whereas the word chance is used literally.

A literal idiom, e.g. in sum, on the contrary, and in the meantime is

semantically simpler than pure and semi-idioms, and therefore it is easier to

understand even though one is not accustomed to these expressions.

2.3 Teaching of Idioms

As Liontas (2017) described, idioms have not received much attention in

second language acquisition (SLA) studies because of little knowledge and few

studies about the linguistic and cognitive mechanisms for the understanding and

acquisition of idioms in second languages. Liontas (2017) further remarked that even

less is known about the idiom processing mechanisms that enhance the ability to

understand and use them appropriately and accurately in various sociocultural

contexts with the least effort similar to that of native speakers.

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Those who teach English as a second or foreign language are thus left on their

own to incorporate the idioms into their idiom instructions for second language

learners. A lot of teachers choose not to teach idioms at all, arguing that idioms are

such “specialized lexicalized items” for language learners that they should best

acquire them on their own time when traveling abroad or when they have a chance to

interact with native speakers. Others, taking a hands-off approach to idioms, feel that

idioms are difficult to teach and that they create more problems than they solve.

Therefore, why teach idiom? Liontas (2017) makes the following suggestions

as to why it is very important to teach idioms in the L2 classroom. Firstly, idioms help

learners to encounter authentic language and gain an intense knowledge of human

expression and development of language over time. Secondly, learners can go beyond

the literal meaning of idioms and gain understanding through the context. Thirdly,

learners are required to produce idioms like native speakers normally do to enhance

learners’ mastery of them. Finally, learning idioms in the classroom can help teachers

to build up learners’ idiomatic competency.

2.4 Applying Idiom Research to Teaching

Cooper (1998) investigated the teaching of idioms and suggested that one

select idioms that are frequently encountered in the target language in one’s lesson. In

a more recent study on the teaching and learning English idioms by Zimmerman-

Edison (2015), three key practices for comprehension, production, and retention of

idioms are proposed. The first practice is to apply trials and errors by using strategies

such as contextual guessing, taking the idiom’s literal meaning to understand the

figurative meaning, and discussing and analyzing the idiom to reach the figurative

meaning. The second practice is to start with the most common idioms; idioms can be

easily learned from high-frequency use in conversation and texts. This way, a corpus

can play a crucial role in providing empirical evidence so that one can identify high

frequency idioms for teaching and learning. The last practice is to use underlying

themes or origins of the idioms. The underlying theme such as idioms from colors,

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numbers, food, parts of the body or historic origins of where the idioms were derived

from can help one understand and recall their figurative meaning easily.

Therefore, selection of the appropriate idioms for teaching the topic is very

crucial when it comes to classroom teaching and learning as well as materials

development. Many EFL educators follow on their favorable manner and prior

knowledge to make their choices based on intuition and personal experience on topic,

key words and idiomatic themes. However, some researchers such as Liu (2003),

Simpson and Mendis (2003), and Grant (2005) have preferred language corpora as a

basis for selecting idioms to the biased approach above and suggested incorporating

idioms which are the most frequently found in the corpora into EFL teaching

materials. They believed that a corpus-based selection of idioms would be objective

and free from personal bias or attitudes. In addition, the learners would be able to

benefit more from a course including the extra vocabulary which is more frequently

used in real life and more relevant to their needs.

2.5 Previous Studies

Early studies on idioms such as Makkai’s (1972) studies often emphasized

assembling collections of idiom examples rather than finding how frequent they might

be. Later, a number of studies changed from text-based to corpus-based study of

idiom frequencies, forms and functions. There were corpus related idiom studies,

similar to this present study, such as a study by Alavi and Rajabpoor (2014), which

identified and quantified the idioms used in three advanced level textbooks and

compared them across three different English corpora: MICASE, BNC, and the

Brown Corpus. The results showed that there were different numbers and type of

idioms in all the books and the idioms chosen did not meet frequency criteria set as

per the literature.

Next was a corpus-based study of phrasal verbs (PVs) conducted by Liu

(2011). The study used COCA and BNC to identify the frequency and usage patterns

of the most common PVs in these two corpora. The results provided useful

information about the use of PVs, a comprehensive list of the 150 most common PVs

in American and British English, and a cross-register list of the most frequent PVs

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showing in which register (s) each of the PVs is mainly used. For example, some of

the most common PVs in American and British English found in Liu’s study were go

on, pick up, come back, go back and find out.

The reason to put phrasal verbs together in this idiom study is because of a

linguistic rationale. As the definition of phrasal verb is idiomatic and the meaning of

the verb and particle which formed a particular phrasal verb is different from the base

verb on its own, therefore, by this definition, in some respect it is consistent with the

definition of idiom given earlier in this chapter.

Another corpus-based study of idioms was conducted by Grant (2005), who

examined the frequencies of 103 ‘core idioms’ in the British National Corpus (BNC).

This study focused on a comprehensive list of one category of idioms and compared it

to the 5,000 most frequent words of English. Grant’s (2005) study revealed that none

of the 103 core idioms occurs frequently enough to appear in the 5,000 most frequent

words of English. Examples of 103 core idioms that do not occur in the 5,000 most

frequent words of English include by and large -, so (-) and (-) so -, such (-) and (-)

such -, out (-) of (-) hand - and take the piss -.

2.6 Summary

This chapter has discussed various issues about idioms including general facts

about idioms such as definition and classification of idioms, teaching of idioms,

applying idiom research to teaching and examples of previous studies on idioms. The

present study seeks to identify frequent and useful idioms in everyday English as an

attempt to make a contribution to the developing line of idiom research to help

improve idiom teaching and learning among teachers and learners.

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CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter elaborates the data collection method in detail. It consists of three

sections. Section 3.1 describes published idiom resources used in this study. Section

3.2 provides detail of two main corpora as well as a freeware concordance program

used for investigating the idioms’ frequency. Finally, section 3.3 explains data

collection procedure used in this study.

3.1 Published Resources Used

The idioms that were analyzed for frequency of use in this study were

extracted from one published idiom book which was a non-corpus-based book. In

order to come up with an initial list of commonly used idioms for a search for their

frequencies in COCA, it would not be applicable to obtain them all from any idiom

dictionary as it would contain numerous idioms, and this would create a lot of burden

as well as time consuming extraction. The best possible and most practical way that

was adopted in this study was to extract the idioms from a well-known publication (to

be discussed in 3.1.1) as the first filter of a commonly used idioms list and then to

examine their idiomatic validity against an idiom dictionary (to be discussed in 3.1.2),

after which the initial list would be formed.

3.1.1 Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms

Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms is the published resource used in this study.

This book was written by Marvin Terban, published by Scholastic Inc. in New York,

USA and first printed in July 2006. According to Amazon.com, Marvin Terban is an

author of bestselling and award-winning English language books for children. He has

teaching experience in various fields such as the art of language, English, Latin, and

Public Speaking at the Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in New York City.

This book is designed for Grade 3-7 learners and it introduces more than 700

everyday American idioms including sample sentences. The book has been chosen

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because it is a popular book with more than 1 million copies sold in hard copies and

online via Amazon website, which is accessible to customers from all over the world.

Moreover, it is highly recommended by more than 200 online reviewers. Even though

this book was partly entitled a dictionary of idioms, it is not a conventional dictionary

since it stores only the meanings and sample sentences of idioms.

3.1.2 Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs

Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs is the dictionary written by

Richard A. Spears, published by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. USA in 2005. It

is considered as the most practical reference to idiomatic and verbal expressions of

contemporary American English, containing over 24,000 phrases and expressions.

3.2 The Corpora Used

In this study, the main focus is on the most frequently used English idioms

extracted from an American published resource and comparing those idioms with a

learner corpus; therefore, an applicable corpus representing American contexts was

the prominent COCA and a learner corpus representing data from Asian learners of

English was ICNALE with AntConc as an interfacing concordance program for

concordance search.

3.2.1 The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)

One of the main two corpora used to obtain the overall frequency count for

most frequently used English idioms in this study was The Corpus of Contemporary

American English or COCA. The COCA corpus is a large free web-based online

interface provided by Professor Mark Davies of Brigham Young University. It was

chosen for this study because of its representativeness and contemporariness of

American English, as well as largeness in word size and the coverage of various

academic disciplines. With more than 560 million words of texts, updated with about

20 million words each year during 1990 - 2017 (Latest update was on December

2017), it is considered to be the largest freely available and the most widely used

corpus of English. In addition, it consists of 5 genres which are fiction, spoken,

popular magazines, newspapers, and academic texts, with more than 80 million words

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each. In this study, the search of the most frequently used English idioms was not

restricted to any specific genre. It included all genres available in COCA since it was

a general search for the most frequently used English idioms in an American context.

3.2.2 The International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English

(ICNALE)

Another corpus used for the concordance search of most frequently used

English idioms in this study was The International Corpus Network of Asian Learners

of English or ICNALE. The ICNALE corpus is an international learner corpus

focusing on Asian learners of English, developed and gathered by Dr. Shin’ichiro

Ishikawa of Kobe University, Japan. It consists of approximately 2.0 million words

with more than 10,000 topic-controlled speeches and essays produced by L2 English

learners (ESL/EFL) of various proficiency levels; e.g. college and graduate students

from some countries in Asia namely, Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan,

Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Pakistan and Thailand, as well as data from 200

native English speakers. The corpora also included the same essays written under the

same conditions by native speakers from a range of English-speaking countries which

makes it ideal for comparisons between L1 and L2 output.

Currently, it comprises of four modules which are Spoken Monologue,

Spoken Dialogue, Written Essays, and Edited Essays. It is considered as one of the

largest learner corpora publicly available and a reliable database for a contrastive

interlanguage analysis of Asian learners as well as studies of World Englishes in Asia.

This study will use the download version, not online, as it is more up-to-date than the

online version.

3.2.3 A Concordance Program (AntConc)

AntConc is a simple freeware corpus analysis program for concordancing and

text analysis, developed by Professor Laurence Anthony, Director of the Centre for

English Language Education, Waseda University, Japan. This program is available in

different versions such as for Windows, Mac and Linux, and it can be downloaded for

free use with online guide and video tutorials. The program used in this study was

AntConc version 3.5.7.0.

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3.3 Data Collection Procedure

The data collection procedure of this present study is described in detail in two

parts: the first part is the procedure conducted to answer the first research question

(consisting of four steps) and the second part is to respond to the second research

question.

3.3.1 Data collection for the first research question

The first step was an extraction of idioms to identify an initial idiom list from

a published idiom book, which, in this study, was Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms,

based on the criteria of in-scope idioms set in Section 1.5 ‘Scope of the study’ in

Chapter 1. Idioms that were not within the scope of the study were left out. These

included idioms with variable classes such as hold one’s breath, lose one’s shirt,

grease someone’s palm, and take one’s time because these kinds of idiom would need

to perform a number of concordance search attempts substituting one for nouns and

pronouns to eventually obtain complete search of idiomatic tokens; moreover, it

would be even more complicated and time consuming for the search and the result

from each search might not be significant. The next procedure was to examine

idiomatic validity of the initial idiom list by looking up the idioms in the idiom

dictionary, Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs, before proceeding to

the second step. When the idioms were found in the dictionary, they were then

verified as valid idioms.

The second step involved a concordance search for frequency of occurrence of

all idioms in the initial list received from the first step. This was conducted by

entering each idiom one at a time in COCA. In this querying step, the search for the

frequency would be challenging since one would not accomplish the search by simply

entering the idiom and getting concordance lines with a final number of frequency.

This was because not every concordance line displayed by such a search is a real

idiom. Comprehensive justification on whether they could be a real idiom or just a

normal phrase would be required. For example, the piece of cake entry as shown in

Figure 1 below was found in 502 tokens in COCA. This number included both

idiomatic and non-idiomatic expression results in the concordance lines. As shown in

Figure 2, there were 15 concordance lines; in fact, some lines were non-idiomatic

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such as ‘she asked forking a piece of cake into her mouth’ and ‘After taking just a

small piece of cake, she left.’ So, in this step, a thorough review of each concordance

line was done to ensure the accurate frequency that reflected the real idiom usage.

Figure 1 Frequency counts of piece of cake in COCA

Figure 2 Concordance lines of piece of cake in COCA

In the third step, for any idiom which contained a main part of the phrase as a

verb, all forms of the verb such as infinitive, past, and past participle forms were

verified. For example, for the break the ice entry as shown in Figure 3, the search

found 152 tokens of the verb in the infinitive form. As shown in Figure 4, the search

found 57 tokens of the verb in the past form and Figure 5, the search found 10 tokens

of the verb in the past participle form; therefore, the total frequency of break the ice

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included all three forms, which were 219 tokens, in order to complete the break the

ice entry search.

Figure 3 Frequency counts of break the ice in COCA

Figure 4 Frequency counts of broke the ice in COCA

Figure 5 Frequency counts of broken the ice in COCA

In addition, for other variations of idiom forms such as a multi-word idiom

which came with a hyphenated form, the corpus searched for both hyphenated and

non-hyphenated forms. For example, the list of down-to-earth instances as in Figure

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6, and the list of down to earth instances as in Figure 7 were processed for a search as

well. Therefore, the total number of tokens included both forms.

Figure 6 Frequency counts of down-to-earth in COCA

Figure 7 Frequency counts of down to earth in COCA

The fourth step involved ranking the listed idioms by their frequency counts

received from COCA. This was conducted by arranging the idioms based on the

highest to the lowest frequency counts. Then, the top 50 ranked idioms in frequency

were utilized as a comprehensive list to investigate further in a learner corpus

(ICNALE) in order to answer the second research question.

3.3.2 Data collection for the second research question

In response to the second research question, we examined the list of 50 idioms

obtained from the process discussed in section 3.3.1 against their frequency counts in

ICNALE. Prior to that, we employed AntConc, an interface program used for

concordance search in ICNALE. Then we were able to find out how frequently the

top 50 idioms occurred in ICNALE, and finally accomplished the results for further

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analysis. Figure 8 below displays the screen of AntConc used for concordance search

of the top 50 idiom from ICNALE.

Figure 8 Sample screen shot of AntConc’s search

3.4 Summary

To summarize this chapter, this study employed various types of resources to

obtain the most frequently used English idioms based on their frequencies of

occurrence. The following procedures were applied in a step-wise fashion, i.e.

extraction of idioms from Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms, validation of the idioms

through Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs, and performing frequency

counts, using a corpus concordance search in COCA, and a corpus interface program

in ICNALE.

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CHAPTER 4

RESULTS

This chapter presents the results of the present study, which employed corpora

to investigate and identify frequently used English idioms. Consistent with the

methodology presented in chapter 3, the results to be reported involve published

resource idioms extraction, identification of in-scope idioms based on the criteria set

in Chapter 1, and examination through an idiomatic validity test. After that, a report

from our investigation of their frequency in COCA and acquisition of the top 50 most

frequently used English idioms will follow. In addition to the above findings, the

results of investigation for the frequency counts of idioms using ICNALE will be

presented. We will report the results corresponding to our research questions next.

4.1 Results of Research Question 1

Research question 1: How often do the selected English idioms from a published

resource occur in COCA?

In answering the first research question, firstly, we followed the first step of

data collection procedure section 3.3.1 in Chapter 3. Idioms were extracted from

Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms and the total number of idioms found was 749. Next,

we identified in-scope idioms according to the criteria set in section 1.5 in Chapter 1;

the result came up with 696 in-scope idioms and after these idioms were checked with

regard to their idiomatic validity from the dictionary, the number was reduced to 535

idioms which were used as an initial list of idioms. The results of this step of data

collection procedure were summarized and are displayed in Table 1 below. In

addition, the list of all idioms in the initial list can be seen in Appendix A.

Table 1 Initial List of Idioms and Related Data

Idioms extracted from Scholastic

Dictionary of Idioms

In-scope idioms

Passed idiomatic validity test

Initial list of idioms

No. of idioms

749

696

535

535

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After receiving the initial list of idioms, we followed the second and third

steps of data collection procedure for a concordance search from COCA and checked

whether or not each token was a real idiom. The results of frequency counts for all

535 idioms in the initial list found from this procedure were summarized with

frequency counts and presented in descending order in Appendix B.

Based on the list of 535 idioms above, we obtained a comprehensive list of

the top 50 most frequently used English idioms. This list together with their frequency

counts appears in Table 2 below.

Table 2 Top 50 Most Frequently Used English Idioms in COCA

No.

Top 50 Idioms Freq.

Count No. Top 50 Idioms Freq. Count

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

bottom line cutting edge down-to-earth word-of-mouth red tape hang in there in a nutshell hit the road down the drain right off the bat tip of the iceberg raise an eyebrow tongue-in-cheek by the book out of the woods get real up against the wall chill out on a shoestring bells and whistles last straw out on a limb lame duck breath of fresh air piece of cake

8,959 1,381 1,253 1,086

953 847 721 662 631 531 528 519 503 495 480 455 455 443 430 425 422 407 392 372 359

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

labor of love get away with murder in the same boat red herring scratch the surface turn the tables cold turkey on top of the world point of no return off-the-wall call the shots for the birds cold feet food for thought on the rocks break the ice drop in the bucket in the driver's seat throw in the towel back to the drawing board see eye to eye in the limelight par for the course call it a day mince words

317 316 311 309 308 303 295 295 295 285 279 277 272 268 255 250 249 248 239 233 233 223 219 217 210

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With regard to the frequency counts of the top 50 most frequently used

English idioms in Table 2 above, some idioms contained tokens that varied in

spelling, the presence and absence of hyphenation, and verb forms. Table 3 and Table

4 below illustrate examples of different forms of idioms found in COCA.

Table 3 Examples of Hyphenated and Non-Hyphenated Tokens

Idioms Freq. Count Total Freq. Count

down-to-earth down to earth word-of-mouth word of mouth tongue-in-cheek tongue in cheek off-the-wall off the wall

(730) (523) (300) (786) (374) (129) (166) (119)

1,253

1,086

503

285

Table 4 Examples of Different Verb Form Tokens

Idioms Freq. Count Total Freq. Count

hang in there hung in there hanging in there hangs in there break the ice broke the ice broken the ice breaking the ice breaks the ice

(535) (103) (198) (11)

(152) (57) (10) (16) (15)

847

250

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4.2 Results of Research Question 2

Research question 2: How frequently do the top 50 idioms above occur in an L2

learner corpus (i.e. ICNALE)?

In answering research question 2, we followed data collection procedure

section 3.1.2 in Chapter 3. A concordance search of all idioms in the initial list from

ICNALE was performed with AntConc, the interface program, to investigate

frequency counts of the top 50 most frequently used English idioms received from

research question 1, and to find out how many idioms occurred in a learner corpus,

ICNALE. The results of the concordance search of all idioms in the initial list are

displayed in Table 5 below.

Table 5 Commonly Occurring Idioms in COCA and ICNALE and Frequency Counts

No. List of idioms Freq. Count

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

in a nutshell bottom line breath of fresh air chill out couch potato put the cart before the horse down-to-earth with flying colors word-of-mouth bite the bullet cutting edge down the drain drive you mad face the music in the same boat jump the gun money burns a hole in your pocket piece of cake red tape school of hard knocks

14 6 4 4 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

From the total number of idioms in the initial list, there were only 20 idioms

with frequency counts equaling or higher than 1 found in ICNALE whereas there

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were 502 idioms found in COCA. Considering those 20 idioms found in ICNALE,

half of them appeared in COCA’s top 50 idioms. Interestingly, all the top 5 idioms in

COCA were also found in ICNALE. The results showing the number of idioms with

‘Hit’, i.e. those with 1 occurrence and above, and the number of idioms with ‘No Hit,’

i.e. those without any occurrence, in COCA and ICNALE appear in Table 6.

Interestingly, the pattern of ‘Hit’ and ‘No Hit’ of COCA is the opposite direction of

that of ICNALE. In addition, given the data in Table 6, native English speakers use

idioms 25 times more often than non-native speakers.

Table 6 Number of Idioms with ‘Hit’ and ‘No Hit’ in COCA and ICNALE

Corpus Idioms with ‘Hit’

Idioms with ‘No Hit’

Total No. of Idioms

% of idiom with ‘Hit’

COCA

ICNALE

502 20

33

515

535 535

93.8 3.7

‘Hit’= Idioms with frequency count > 0 and ‘No Hit’ = Idioms with frequency count = 0

Table 7 below illustrates five idioms that we found in ICNALE which also

appeared in the top 5 most frequently occurring idioms of COCA.

Table 7 List of Idioms found across ICNALE and COCA’s Top 5

No. List of idioms Ranking in top 50 Freq. Count (COCA)

Freq. Count (ICNALE)

1 2 3 4 5

bottom line cutting edge down-to-earth word-of-mouth red tape

1 2 3 4 5

8,959 1,381 1,253 1,086 953

6 1 2 2 1

Apart from the results given above, while performing data collection and

review of concordance lines in COCA, we needed to find out the meaning of each

idiom in order to understand the whole context and justify which context was used as

an idiom. Therefore, we obtained the idiom meanings and contexts as additional data

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for the results of this study. Here below are definitions of five idioms found across

ICNALE and COCA’s Top 5, as shown in Table 7. Dictionary of American Idioms

and Phrasal Verbs and COCA are the resources from which the definitions and

contexts are presented. We also incorporate remarks on how these idioms are used.

1. bottom line: This idiom is a noun, with literal and figurative meanings.

Literally, it refers to the last figure on a financial profit-and-loss statement, or

the last figure on a bill. It is typically used in the register of financial results of

a company, organization or institution. Figuratively, bottom line means the

result or final outcome reached after a decisive point such as the result of a

game, negotiation, and a meeting. Below are contextualized examples.

- Chief Executive Lawrence A. Hough also said the company's bottom line

has benefited from its success in holding down costs and servicing loans

more efficiently.

- She just didn't deserve it and that's just the bottom line.

2. cutting edge: This idiom is a noun with a figurative meaning, i.e. the most

forward or leading part of a trend. It is mostly used in the context of new

evolution of science, technology and equipment. Below are contextualized

examples.

- This morning, our fitness expert Bonnie Kaye is back on the cutting edge

with equipment that will take your workout to the next level.

- They've been at the cutting edge of technology and digital journalism for

over a decade.

3. down-to-earth: This idiom is an adjective, with two figurative meanings. The

first meaning is “direct, frank, and honest”, which is normally used in the

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context that conveys the personality or characteristics of a person. The second

meaning is “practical, not theoretical, not fanciful,” which can be found in the

context that conveys effectiveness, practicality and suitability of the subject

matter under discussion. Below are contextualized examples.

- The needs may be concrete and down-to-earth, such as cheaper power or

a cure for a particular disease.

- She would give everybody the impression she was this kindhearted, down-

to-earth person.

4. word-of-mouth: The part of speech of this idiom is adjective; its meaning is

associated with oral communication, e.g. telling people about something.

Normally, it is used in the context of sales and marketing, services, news,

social media, advertisement and announcement, which can be conveyed in

both positive and negative ways. Below are contextualized examples.

- The Sixth Sense, in 1999, turning a small-scale ghost story into a word-of-

mouth smash hit that dominated the box office for an entire summer.

- We started with a limited product range, zero cash flow and only word-of-

mouth marketing.

5. red tape: The part of speech of this idiom is noun, with a figurative meaning

of “over-strict attention to the wording and details of rules and regulations,

especially by government workers”. It is generally used in the context of rules

and regulation, procedure of the government administration, company or

organization. Below are contextualized examples.

- She said the Administration has taken steps to reduce the law's red tape.

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- That's why my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up

new oil and gas permits.

4.3 Summary

This chapter presented the data collected in response to two research questions

of the study. All the results were presented in tables containing the findings from the

study. For the first research question, an initial list of idioms extracted from

Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms and a comprehensive list of top 50 most frequently

used English idioms obtained from COCA were reported. For the second research

question, the idioms from the initial list were examined against those found in

ICNALE. Finally, we provided additional information about meaning and usage in

contexts of the top five idioms commonly found in COCA and ICNALE.

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CHAPTER 5

DISCUSSION, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This chapter discusses the findings of the study in the previous chapter with

reference to the literature on teaching idioms and corpus linguistics. The summary of

this chapter is organized into five sections. Section 5.1 displays the summary of the

study and summary of the findings is described in section 5.2. Section 5.3 is the

discussion of the study and is then followed by section 5.4, which discusses the

conclusions from the findings. Lastly, section 5.5 suggests future research

recommendations.

5.1 Summary of the Study

This present study is a corpus-based research study. It aimed to identify the

most frequently used English idioms in COCA and to investigate the use of idioms by

ESL/EFL learners using ICNALE, a learner corpus. The study set out to answer the

following questions:

1. How often do the selected English idioms from a published resource occur in

the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)?

2. How frequently do the top 50 idioms above occur in an L2 learner corpus?

According to the objectives of this study, a comprehensive list of top 50 most

frequently used English idioms is provided. It is advised that all teachers use the list

as a guideline in teaching idioms. We have also reported the results from our

investigation of idioms used by ESL/EFL learners through ICNALE.

5.2 Summary of the Findings

The data collected in this study addressed the results according to each

research question. For the first research question, frequency counts of all idioms

extracted from a published resource, i.e. Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms, were

examined in COCA. The total number of 535 idioms, presented in full in Appendix A,

was used as an initial list for the rest of the study. Also, the frequency counts results

of all idioms are listed in Appendix B; the top ten idioms with a range of frequency

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counts between 8,959 and 531 are bottom line, cutting edge, down-to-earth, word-of-

mouth, red tape, hang in there, in a nutshell, hit the road, down the drain, and right

off the bat.

In respect of the second research question, we performed frequency counts of

the above idioms in ICNALE and all the results are listed in Tables 5-7. Considering

how often these idioms are used in the two corpora, the percentage of idioms with

occurrences in COCA was remarkably greater than that in ICNALE (93.8% vs. 3.7%).

A further analysis as shown in Table 7 revealed 10 commonly occurring idioms

across 20 idioms found in ICNALE and the top 50 COCA lists. More interestingly,

the group of five idioms found in ICNALE was identical to that of the top 5 in the

COCA lists. This has shown that ESL/EFL learners with L1 backgrounds of Asian

languages seem to be aware of the usage of idioms, as the top 5 and top 10 items,

despite minimal instances, are close to those of native English speakers.

5.3 Discussion

From the results in Chapter 4, this section discusses the aspects concerning the

research questions that have been raised earlier in Chapter 1. The study has uncovered

the frequency information of English idioms extracted from a published resource

using COCA to provide a comprehensive list of the most frequently used idioms for

idioms learning and teaching. According to Zimmerman-Edison (2015), one of the

three key practices in teaching and learning English idioms is to start with the most

frequently used idioms. This means that idioms should be selected for teaching from

high-frequency use in real life. Besides, a comprehensive list of the top 50 most

frequently used idioms, which is provided in Table 2, can be used as a guideline or

reference for teachers to select for idioms teaching.

However, it is up to the teachers’ consideration to determine which idioms

should be incorporated into idiom instruction and materials. Each teacher may select

idioms that are consistent with the topics and context they plan to teach in their

classroom. The selected idioms may not be necessarily a fit with the top 50 list

provided in this study. Sometimes teachers may select idioms in lower frequency

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counts which are suitable for the topic but should not select the idioms with too low

frequency counts because they reflect seldom-used idioms in real life situations.

For the use of idioms among Asian ESL/EFL learners, the study found that of

a total number of 535 idioms in the initial list, 93.8% of the idioms were found in

COCA whereas only 3.7% of idioms were found in ICNALE. This is a much lower

percentage in term of idioms range used among Asian learners and it reflects a need to

enhance competency in using idioms. As a teacher, the comprehensive list of the 50

most frequently used English idioms from this study can be used for idiom selection

to teach the learners.

In addition, the results show that all idioms in COCA’s top 5 such as bottom

line, cutting edge, down-to-earth, word-of-mouth, and red tape also appeared in

ICNALE. When comparing these five idioms in term of frequencies found between

the two corpora as in Table 7, the frequency of ICNALE is greatly lower than COCA.

This revealed an inadequacy of idiom usage among Asian learners compared to native

speakers. Some reasons behind this might be lack of idiom teaching and teaching

without practicing through the context. Therefore, this result can considerably ensure

that the afroementions idioms should be chosen and explicitly taught through the

context in a classroom.

When we compared the results of this study with those of previous studies,

especially results from Grant (2005), we found that some of his idioms also appeared

in this study. For example, piece of cake, red herring, and cold turkey were found in

the top 50 COCA list. In addition, some other idioms such as white elephant, chew the

fat, eat crow, kick the bucket, and put your foot in your mouth in Grant’s study were

tokens that appeared in a greater pool, beyond the top 50 COCA list.

In terms of Alavi & Rajabpoor’s (2014) and Liu’s (2011) studies, even though

their results cannot be compared methodologically with this study since the idioms

they focused on were phrasal verbs, this study, with the exclusion of phrasal verbs,

can contribute to these other aspects of idiom studies. However, facts about

commonly used idioms across L1 and L2 corpora have not yet been discovered, given

the literature that we have reviewed.

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5.3 Conclusion

This corpus-based study on an investigation of most frequently used English

idioms is contributing to studies in the field of idioms teaching, which, in fact, have

not received much attention according to Liontas (2017). Idiom frequency study

through a corpus can provide a practical support to idiom teaching and learning and

help with decision making of idioms selection as it provides an empirical data rather

than depending on intuition. The results of this study can be more or less beneficial to

all teachers and learners; particularly, ESL/EFL learners can gain a deeper knowledge

on idioms used as well as understanding through the context in authentic language.

Ultimately, this can help enhance language proficiency level and idiomatic

competency of the learners.

5.4 Recommendations for Future Research

This study has contributed to the field of idiom frequency, which still takes a

backseat in second language research. Liu (2003) pointed out that there was lack of

literature and research interest in the selection of idioms for L2 learners. Throughout

the past decade, a few studies have contributed to this field, and this study is a

continuation in line with past research studies based on the seminal studies in this area

such as Liu (2003) and Liontas (2017). There are several directions recommended for

future research which should be taken into consideration to investigate further.

Firstly, additional research can be conducted to investigate the frequency of

the idioms included in other idioms books. More published idiom books or idiom

textbooks adopted can be examined to expand wider the range of idioms to cover

more frequently used idioms as much as possible. One possible alternative is to

employ the initial list in this study as a starting point and add more idioms from other

resources. Moreover, language learning textbooks in particular may have substantial

impact on what ESL/EFL learners are learning and what is happening in their

classroom. Therefore, if most idiom textbooks tend to include low frequency idioms

in general, there is a pressing need to rectify this situation to ensure that the learners

are learning what they need in order to use the language effectively in real life.

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Secondly, a comparative study between American and British English idioms

using an additional corpus such as British National Corpus (BNC) representing

British English should be beneficial for those idiom differences. This can provide

more insight into the most common idioms that are generally rather similar between

the two English varieties which are used in different parts of the world. Learners or

teachers of English need not be concerned about the problem of learning idioms that

are useful only in American or British English.

Thirdly, providing a study on discussion and examples of various idiom usage

patterns found in different contexts would level up the learners’ competency in using

idioms. For example, learners can enhance their ability in distinguishing the different

meanings of an idiom by going through concordance lines of an idiom query to

determine the meaning of each specific idiom, whether they are literal or figurative

meanings. Such exposure to idioms can also help learners become more familiar with

idioms and then more comfortable in using them, hence helping overcome their

inclination to avoid using idioms.

Lastly, future researchers may desire to explore the differences in the use of

English idioms between ESL/EFL learners from Asian and Western countries. Such

future study may include other learner corpora for comparison of idioms used such as

the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) which includes data from L2

learners mainly from European countries.

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Corpus Analysis and Its implications. TESOL Quarterly, 37(4), 671-700.

Liu, D. (2011). The Most Frequently Used English Phrasal Verbs in American and

British English: A Multicorpus Examination. TESOL Quarterly, 45(4), 661-

688.

Makkai, Adam. 1972. Idiom Structure in English. The Hague: Mouton.

Moon, R. (1998). Fixed Expressions and Idioms in English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Roberto De Caro, E.E. (2009). The Advantage and Importance of Learning and Using

Idioms in English. Cuadernos de Lingüística Hispánica N.° 14 ISSN 0121-

053X Julio-Diciembre 2009; p. 121-136

Simpson, R., & Mendis, D. (2003). A Corpus-Based Study of Idioms in Academic

Speech. TESOL Quarterly, 37(3), 419. doi: 10.2307/3588398

Spears, R. A. (2005). McGraw-Hills dictionary of American idioms and phrasal

verbs. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Terban, M. (2006). Scholastic dictionary of idioms. New York: Scholastic Reference.

Timmis, I. (2015). Corpus linguistics for ELT: Research and practice. London:

Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Zimmerman-Edison, C. (2015). Brief Report: Teaching and learning English idioms

in the classroom. NYS TESOL Journal, 2(1), 70-75.

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APPENDICES

APPENDIX A The initial list of idioms in alphabetical order

List of Idioms List of Idioms A

Achilles’ heel add fuel to the fire all ears all that glitters is not gold all thumbs asleep at the switch at the drop of a hat at the end of your rope

B babe in the woods back to square one back to the drawing board backseat driver baker's dozen ballpark figure bark up the wrong tree batten down the hatches beat a dead horse beat around the bush beauty is in the eye of the beholder bed of roses beggars can't be choosers behind the eight ball bells and whistles below par better safe than sorry between a rock and a hard place between the devil and the deep blue sea beware of Greeks bearing gifts bird in the hand is worth two in the bush birds of a feather flock together bite off more than you can chew bite the bullet bite the dust bite the hand that feeds you bite your tongue black sheep of the family bleeding heart blessing in disguise blind as a bat blind leading the blind blood is thicker than water

blow your own horn blow your stack blow your top blue blood bolt from the blue born with a silver spoon in your mouth bottom line break a leg break the ice breath of fresh air bright-eyed and bushy-tailed bring home the bacon bug off bull in a china shop burn the candle at both ends burn the midnight oil burn your bridges behind you burn yourself out bursting at the seams busman's holiday busy as a beaver busy as a bee butterflies in the stomach button your lip buy a pig in a poke by hook or by crook by the book by the skin of your teeth

C call it a day call the shots call you on the carpet call your bluff calm before the storm can't hit the side of a barn carry coals to Newcastle carry the ball carry the weight of the world on your shoulders carved in stone cast pearls before swine cast the first stone champ at the bit

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List of Idioms List of Idioms cheek by jowl chew the fat chicken feed chickens come home to roost chill out chip off the old block chip on your shoulder clean as a hound's tooth clean as a whistle clean bill of health clear as a bell clear the decks climb the walls clip your wings cloak-and-dagger close shave clutch at straws cold feet cold shoulder cold turkey come apart at the seams come out of your shell come up smelling like a rose cook your goose cooking with gas cool as a cucumber cool it cool your heels cost an arm and a leg couch potato cream of the crop cross that bridge when you come to it cry over spilled milk cry wolf cut off your nose to spite your face cut the mustard cutting edge

D dead as a dodo dead as a doornail dead duck diamond in the rough dime a dozen do or die don't count your chickens before they hatch don't look a gift horse in the mouth don't take any wooden nickels down-at-the-heels down in the dumps down in the mouth down the drain

down the hatch down-to-earth draw the line at dressed to kill dressed to the nines drive a hard bargain drive you crazy drive you mad drive you nuts drive you up the wall drop in the bucket drop you like a hot potato dull as dishwater Dutch treat dyed-in-the-wool

E eager beaver early bird catches the worm easy as pie easy as rolling off a log easy come, easy go eat crow eat humble pie eat out of your hand eat your heart out elbow grease every cloud has a silver lining every Tom, Dick, and Harry everything but the kitchen sink eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth

F face the music fair-weather friend famous last words fan the flames fat cat feather your nest fiddle while Rome burns fifth wheel fill the bill fish or cut bait fit as a fiddle fit like a glove flash in the pan flotsam and jetsam fly in the ointment fly off the handle fly the coop foam at the mouth food for thought footloose and fancy-free

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List of Idioms List of Idioms for the birds forty winks full of beans full of hot air full steam ahead

G get away with murder get down to brass tacks get into the swing of things get out of my face get real get the lead out of your feet get this show on the road get under your skin get up on the wrong side of the bed gild the lily give me five give up the ghost go against the grain go along for the ride go bananas go Dutch go fly a kite go for broke go fry an egg go jump in a lake go over like a lead balloon go over with a fine-tooth comb go to the dogs go to wrack and ruin gone to pot grasp at straws Greek to me green with envy grit your teeth gum up the works

H handle with kid gloves hang in there hard nut to crack have a bone to pick with you have a screw loose have your cake and eat it too have your heart in your mouth head over heels in love heavens to Betsy highway robbery hit below the belt hit the books hit the ceiling hit the hay

hit the jackpot hit the nail right on the head hit the road hit the roof hit the spot hitch your wagon to a star hold the fort hold your horses hold your tongue horse of a different color hot under the collar

I if the shoe fits, wear it ignorance is bliss in a nutshell in a pickle in hot water in the bag in the catbird seat in the doghouse in the driver’s seat in the lap of luxury in the limelight in the pink in the same boat in two shakes of a lamb's tail it takes two to tango

J jack-of-all-trades jump down your throat jump off the deep end jump on the bandwagon jump the gun

K keep a stiff upper lip keep a straight face keep body and soul together keep the wolf from the door keep up with the Joneses keep your chin up keep your shirt on kick the bucket kick up a fuss kill the goose that lays golden eggs kill two birds with one stone knee-high to a grasshopper knock on wood knock your socks off know the ropes

L labor of love

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List of Idioms List of Idioms lame duck last straw laugh out of the other side of your mouth lay an egg lead you by the nose lend an ear let sleeping dogs lie let the cat out of the bag let the chips fall where they may life in the fast lane like a bump on a log like it or lump it like two peas in a pod little pitchers have big ears live high off the hog lock, stock, and barrel long in the tooth loose cannon lose your shirt low man on the totem pole lower the bloom

M mad as a hatter mad as a wet hen make a mountain out of a molehill make hay while the sun shines make waves make your mouth water march to the beat of a different drummer mince words mind over matter miss the boat money burns a hole in your pocket monkey business more than meets the eye mum's the word

N necessity is the mother of invention nickel-and-dime no dice no skin off your nose no spring chicken nose out of joint nothing to sneeze at nothing ventured, nothing gained nutty as a fruitcake

O off the beaten track off-the-wall off your rocker off your trolley

old hat old wives' tale on a shoestring on cloud nine on pins and needles on the ball on the double on the fence on the fritz on the horns of a dilemma on the hot seat on the rocks on the spur of the moment on the tip of your tongue on the warpath on top of the world once in a blue moon one good turn deserves another one-horse town one-track mind open a can of worms out in left field out like a light out of sight, out of mind out of the frying pan and into the fire out of the woods out on a limb over a barrel over your head

P par for the course pass the buck pass the hat pay an arm and a leg pay the piper pay through the nose pen is mightier than the sword penny for your thoughts penny-wise and pound-foolish people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones pie in the sky piece of cake play both ends against the middle play cat and mouse play fast and loose play second fiddle play the field play with fire point of no return poor as a church mouse

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List of Idioms List of Idioms pot calling the kettle black pour oil on troubled waters power behind the throne pull a fast one pull no punches pull strings pull the rug out from under you pull the wool over your eyes pull up stakes pull your leg put all your eggs into one basket put the cart before the horse put your best foot forward put your foot down put your foot in your mouth put your money where your mouth is

Q quick on the draw quick on the trigger quick on the uptake quiet as a mouse

R rain check rain on your parade rain or shine raining cats and dogs raise an eyebrow raise Cain raise the devil rat race rats abandoning a sinking ship read between the lines read the riot act real McCoy red-carpet treatment red herring red-letter day red tape right off the bat ring a bell rock the boat roll with the punches rolling out the carpet rolling stone gathers no moss Rome was not built in a day rotten apple spoils the barrel run off at the mouth

S salt of the earth save for a rainy day saved by the bell

say uncle scarce as hen's teeth school of hard knocks scrape the bottom of the barrel scratch the surface see eye to eye sell like hotcakes set your teeth on edge shake a leg shape up or ship out shoe is on the other foot shoot from the hip shoot the breeze shot in the arm show your true colors sick as a dog sight for sore eyes sink or swim sitting duck sitting pretty six of one and a half dozen of the other skate on thin ice skeleton in your closet sky's the limit sleep on it slow off the mark slow on the draw slow on the uptake smell a rat smell like a rose snake in the grass snug as a bug in a rug soft-soap sow your wild oats spare the rod and spoil the child spill the beans spitting image split hairs square peg in a round hole stick to your guns still waters run deep stir up a hornet's nest straight from the horse's mouth straight from the shoulder straighten up and fly right straw that broke the camel's back strike a happy medium strike while the iron is hot swallow hook, line, and sinker swan song sweep you off your feet

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List of Idioms List of Idioms sweet-talk

T take a backseat take a fancy to take a powder take a shine to take the bitter with the sweet take the bull by the horns take the rough with the smooth take the words right out of your mouth talk through your hat that's the way the ball bounces that's the way the cookie crumbles throw a monkey wrench into the works throw caution to the wind throw in the towel throw the baby out with the bathwater throw your hat into the ring throw your weight around tickle the ivories tickle your fancy tickled pink tighten your belt tip of the iceberg toe the line tongue-in-cheek too big for your britches too many cooks spoil the broth touch and go tough nut to crack trip the light fantastic turn over a new leaf turn the other cheek turn the tables

U under the table under the weather up a creek without a paddle up against the wall up to par upper crust upset the applecart

W waiting for the other shoe to drop walk on eggs walking on air watched pot never boils water over the dam wear your heart on your sleeve wet behind the ears wet blanket wheel and deal when the cat's away, the mice will play where there's smoke, there's fire white elephant whole kit and caboodle wild-goose chase with flying colors without batting an eyelash wolf in sheep's clothing word-of-mouth worth your salt wrong side of the tracks

Y you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink you can't teach and old dog new tricks

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APPENDIX B

bottom line cutting edge down-to-earth word-of-mouth red tape hang in there in a nutshell hit the road down the drain right off the bat tip of the iceberg raise an eyebrow tongue-in-cheek by the book out of the woods get real up against the wall chill out on a shoestring bells and whistles last straw out on a limb lame duck breath of fresh air piece of cake labor of love get away with murder in the same boat red herring scratch the surface turn the tables cold turkey on top of the world point of no return off-the-wall call the shots for the birds cold feet food for thought on the rocks break the ice drop in the bucket in the driver's seat throw in the towel back to the drawing- board see eye to eye in the limelight par for the course

8,959 1,381 1,253 1,086

953 847 721 662 631 531 528 519 503 495 480 455 455 443 430 425 422 407 392 372 359 317 316 311 309 308 303 295 295 295 285 279 277 272 268 255 250 249 248 239 233

233 223 219

call it a day mince words clean bill of health hit the jackpot ring a bell couch potato in hot water rock the boat cold shoulder rain or shine back to square one make waves up to par shot in the arm loose cannon on the hot seat rat race at the drop of a hat break a leg touch and go take a backseat sky's the limit with flying colors bite the bullet blessing in disguise draw the line at read between the lines spitting image in the bag white elephant between a rock and a- hard place sleep on it all ears on the spur of the- moment drive you crazy say uncle fat cat miss the boat sweet-talk swan song carry the ball sitting pretty salt of the earth spill the beans keep a straight face face the music jump the gun

217 210 201 201 198 193 190 189 187 186 183 182 182 179 177 170 170 169 168 167 166 164 164 163 160 158 157 155 153 152 150

150 148 147

146 141 139 139 139 137 133 133 129 129 127 126 126

dime a dozen give me five cream of the crop elbow grease turn the other cheek bleeding heart jump on the- bandwagon fan the flames under the table no dice on the double upper crust knock on wood sink or swim cloak-and-dagger pie in the sky off the beaten track out of sight, out of- mind bursting at the seams chicken feed monkey business saved by the bell cool it under the weather cry wolf toe the line dyed-in-the-wool go for broke down in the dumps jack-of-all-trades baker's dozen do or die over your head dressed to kill sitting duck pull up stakes cheek by jowl go against the grain let the chips fall- where they may clear as a bell flash in the pan go along for the ride on pins and needles dressed to the nines on the fritz full steam ahead

125 124 122 121 121 119 119

116 116 115 115 112 111 109 107 107 106 104

103 103 102 101 100 100 98 98 97 95 94 94 93 93 92 91 90 88 87 86 86

85 85 84 84 81 81 80

List of idioms from highest to lowest number of occurrences

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on the ball blue blood long in the tooth fill the bill wet blanket head over heels in- love on the warpath real McCoy diamond in the rough pay the piper take a shine to mind over matter pass the buck play with fire carved in stone flotsam and jetsam give up the ghost roll with the punches wrong side of the- tracks once in a blue moon play second fiddle eat your heart out lay an egg over a barrel better safe than sorry go bananas life in the fast lane on cloud nine beat around the bush green with envy rain check hold your horses straw that broke the- camel's back asleep at the switch throw caution to the- wind play fast and loose bring home the bacon hold your tongue drive you nuts bed of roses calm before the storm nothing to sneeze at tickled pink turn over a new leaf down-at-the-heels highway robbery on the fence school of hard knocks

80 78 78 77 77 76

76 76 75 75 75 74 73 73 72 72 72 71 71

70 70 69 69 69 68 67 67 66 65 65 65 63 63

62 62

61 60 60 59 58 58 58 58 57 56 56 56 56

shoot the breeze bite your tongue down the hatch hit the spot old hat behind the eight ball cast the first stone pull strings hit the books in a pickle it takes two to tango pull no punches get out of my face clear the decks hot under the collar kill two birds with one- stone kick the bucket more than meets the- eye

pull a fast one batten down the- hatches in the pink bolt from the blue babe in the woods hit the roof let sleeping dogs lie play the field drive a hard bargain famous last words keep up with the- Joneses knock your socks off waiting for the other- shoe to drop take the bull by the- horns wolf in sheep's- clothing ballpark figure beauty is in the eye of- the beholder hit the ceiling pass the hat add fuel to the fire below par cool as a cucumber easy as pie go to the dogs in the catbird seat in the lap of luxury

55 54 54 54 54 53 53 53 52 52 52 52 51 50 50 50

49 49

49 48

48 47 46 46 46 46 45 45 45

44 44

43

43

42 42

42 42 41 41 41 41 41 41 41

wheel and deal chip off the old block fly in the ointment ignorance is bliss fifth wheel get under your skin know the ropes necessity is the- mother of invention out like a light slow on the uptake blind leading the- blind clean as a whistle fly off the handle get this show on the- road hold the fort bite the dust keep your chin up mum's the word all thumbs fit as a fiddle sick as a dog chip on your- shoulder dead duck no spring chicken one-track mind out in left field sight for sore eyes wet behind the ears climb the walls close shave dead as a doornail full of beans gone to pot put your money where your mouth is- split hairs take a powder tough nut to crack black sheep of the- family easy come, easy go eat crow grit your teeth pay through the nose blood is thicker than- water by hook or by crook

41 40 40 40 39 39 39 39

38 38 37

37 37 37

37 36 36 36 35 35 35 34

34 34 34 34 34 34 33 33 33 33 33 33 33

33 33 32

32 32 32 32 31

31

List of idioms from highest to lowest number of occurrences

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pot calling the kettle- black smell a rat stick to your guns hit the hay chew the fat cost an arm and a leg shoot from the hip shake a leg wild-goose chase bull in a china shop full of hot air let the cat out of the- bag power behind the- throne where there's smoke, -there's fire blind as a bat one-horse town cut the mustard keep body and soul- together penny for your- thoughts soft-soap bug off everything but the- kitchen sink on the horns of a- dilemma put your foot down fish or cut bait raining cats and dogs whole kit and- caboodle busman's holiday come apart at the- seams fly the coop lock, stock, and barrel put your best foot- forward red-letter day snake in the grass straighten up and fly- right strike while the iron- is hot go Dutch go fly a kite

31

31 31 30 29 29 29 28 28 27 27 27

27

27

26 26 25 25

25

25 24 24

24

24 23 23 23

22 22

22 22 22

22 22 22

22

21 21

put the cart before the- horse beggars can't be- choosers drive you mad keep a stiff upper lip quiet as a mouse sell like hotcakes fit like a glove get down to brass- tacks lend an ear save for a rainy day hit the nail right on- the head shoe is on the other- foot throw the baby out- with the bathwater fair-weather friend gum up the works low man on the totem- pole mad as a hatter quick on the draw sweep you off your- feet

beat a dead horse Dutch treat like it or lump it lose your shirt make your mouth- water read the riot act birds of a feather flock together cooking with gas have your cake and- eat it too in the doghouse that's the way the- cookie crumbles backseat driver bright-eyed and- bushy-tailed down in the mouth Greek to me hard nut to crack horse of a different- color if the shoe fits, wear it nose out of joint

21

20

20 20 20 20 19 19

19 19 18

18

18

17 17 17

17 17 17

16 16 16 16 16

16 15 15 15 15

15 14

14 14

14 14 14 14

14 14

on the tip of your- tongue shape up or ship out square peg in a- round hole too big for your- britches water over the dam at the end of your- rope footloose and fancy-free penny-wise and- pound-foolish red-carpet treatment without batting an- eyelash cool your heels eager beaver keep your shirt on nothing ventured, -nothing gained bite the hand that- feeds you slow off the mark bite off more than- you can chew foam at the mouth forty winks gild the lily heavens to Betsy hit below the belt mad as a wet hen make hay while the- sun shines off your rocker straight from the- horse's mouth burn the midnight oil buy a pig in a poke cry over spilled milk every cloud has a- silver lining get into the swing of- things grasp at straws rolling stone gathers- no moss spare the rod and- spoil the child tighten your belt walking on air

14

14 14

14

14 13

13

13

13 13

12 12 12 12

11

11 10

10 10 10 10 10 10 10

10 10

9 9 9 9

9

9 9

9

9 9

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call your bluff come out of your- shell dull as dishwater knee-high to a- grasshopper pull the wool over- your eyes quick on the uptake raise Cain scrape the bottom of- the barrel still waters run deep upset the applecart all that glitters is not- gold burn the candle at- both ends don't count your- chickens before they- hatch eat humble pie feather your nest have a bone to pick- with you keep the wolf from- the door kick up a fuss like two peas in a pod play cat and mouse quick on the trigger straight from the- shoulder wear your heart on- your sleeve blow your stack butterflies in the- stomach early bird catches the- worm go jump in a lake march to the beat of- a different drummer nutty as a fruitcake open a can of worms pen is mightier than- the sword scarce as hen's teeth skate on thin ice snug as a bug in a rug take a fancy to tickle the ivories

8 8

8 8

8

8 8 8

8 8 7

7

7

7 7 7

7

7 7 7 7 7

7

6 6

6

6 6

6 6 6

6 6 6 6 6

too many cooks spoil- the broth up a creek without a- paddle burn yourself out don't look a gift horse- in the mouth drive you up the wall every Tom, Dick, and- Harry go over like a lead- balloon have a screw loose little pitchers have big- ears pay an arm and a leg Rome was not built in- a day show your true colors slow on the draw stir up a hornet's nest take the bitter with- the sweet beware of Greeks- bearing gifts blow your own horn busy as a bee button your lip don't take any wooden- nickels out of the frying pan- and into the fire pull your leg put your foot in your- mouth rain on your parade run off at the mouth set your teeth on edge tickle your fancy between the devil and- the deep blue sea chickens come home- to roost clean as a hound's- tooth eat out of your hand in two shakes of a- lamb's tail like a bump on a log old wives' tale one good turn- deserves another

6

6

5 5

5 5

5

5 5

5 5

5 5 5 5

4

4 4 4 4

4

4 4

4 4 4 4 3

3

3

3 3

3 3 3

pour oil on troubled- waters strike a happy- medium throw your weight- around trip the light- fantastic watched pot never- boils blow your top busy as a beaver by the skin of your- teeth cut off your nose to- spite your face drop you like a hot- potato fiddle while Rome- burns get up on the wrong- side of the bed go to wrack and ruin jump down your- throat make a mountain- out of a molehill poor as a church- mouse raise the devil rolling out the carpet smell like a rose take the rough with- the smooth that's the way the- ball bounces worth your salt bark up the wrong- tree born with a silver- spoon in your mouth burn your bridges- behind you call you on the- carpet carry coals to- Newcastle carry the weight of- the world on your- shoulders cast pearls before- swine

3

3

3

3

3

2 2 2

2

2

2

2

2 2

2

2

2 2 2 2

2

2 1

1

1

1

1

1

1

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clip your wings clutch at straws dead as a dodo lead you by the nose live high off the hog nickel-and-dime off your trolley play both ends- against the middle put all your eggs into- one basket skeleton in your closet sow your wild oats throw a monkey- wrench into the works throw your hat into- the ring walk on eggs Achilles' heel bird in the hand is- worth two in the bush can't hit the side of a- barn champ at the bit come up smelling like- a rose

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1

1 1 1 1 1

1 0 0

0

0 0

cook your goose cross that bridge- when you come to it easy as rolling off a-

log eye for an eye and a- tooth for a tooth get the lead out of- your feet go fry an egg go over with a fine-tooth comb handle with kid gloves have your heart in- your mouth hitch your wagon to a- star jump off the deep end kill the goose that- lays golden eggs laugh out of the other- side of your mouth lower the bloom money burns a hole in- your pocket

0 0

0

0

0

0 0

0 0

0

0 0

0

0 0

no skin off your nose people who live in- glass houses- shouldn't throw- stones pull the rug out from- under you rats abandoning a- sinking ship rotten apple spoils- the barrel six of one and a half- dozen of the other swallow hook, line, - and sinker take the words right- out of your mouth talk through your hat when the cat's away,- the mice will play you can lead a horse- to water but you- can't make him drink you can't teach and- old dog new tricks

0 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0 0

0

0

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BIOGRAPHY

Name Mr. Somkiat Limsirorat

Date of Birth September 21, 1968

Educational Attainment

1989: B.Sc. (Chemistry) 2nd Class Honors, Prince

of Songkla University, Thailand

1997: MBA, La Trobe University, Australia

2017: B.A. (English) 1st Class Honors, Sukhothai

Thammathirat Open University, Thailand

Work Position Property Analyst

Chevron (Thailand) Ltd. (Caltex Oil)

Work Experiences 2010 - Present: Property Analyst

Chevron (Thailand) Ltd.

2007 – 2009: Commercial & Industrial Sales

Business Consultant

Chevron (Thailand) Ltd.

2005 – 2006: Marketing Associates

Chevron (Thailand) Ltd.

2004 – 2005: Footwear Manager

Adidas (Thailand) Co., Ltd.

1998 – 2004: Product Executive

Bangkok Athletic Co., Ltd.

1990 – 1995: Assistant Shift Supervisor (LPDE)

Thai Petrochemical (Public) Co., Ltd.

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