Open AccessDEVELOPING ONLINE PRACTICE TESTS TO CHECK THE ACQUISITION OF IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS WITH ANIMALS
Author(s) -
Vanya Ivanova,
Гергана Петкова
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
ezikov svât/ezikov svât
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 1
eISSN - 2603-4026
pISSN - 1312-0484
DOI - 10.37708/ezs.swu.bg.v18i2.7
Subject(s) - meaning (existential) , test (biology) , feature (linguistics) , psychology , relation (database) , linguistics , computer science , expression (computer science) , perception , paleontology , philosophy , database , psychotherapist , biology , programming language , neuroscience
Idiomatic expressions, a large number of which refer to animals, are widely used in English sincethey tend to add color to the language and make everyday speech more interesting and exciting for native speakers.However, these expressions pose difficulties for learners of English as their meaning is not deductible from the meaningsof the words comprising it. Furthermore, the meaning may not have any relation to the animals that they feature or theremay not be a correspondence of similar expressions in the learners’ mother tongues. Therefore, strategies to facilitatelearning are needed and some of them, which can help students remember idioms more easily, are described in this article.Emphasis is placed on online practice tests, which check the acquisition of idiomatic expressions and facilitate their longterm retention. Practice tests are designed by the teacher and done by students on their personal computers or mobilephones at their own convenience. Also, some criteria specifically developed to enhance test construction are listedtogether with typical test questions based on them. Examples of different tasks are presented to illustrate the process oftest creation. Finally, an appendix of some of the most commonly used idiomatic expressions with animals is included.