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Like many teachers, I love expressions and sayings in the classroom. What I like about an idiom such as “The grass is always greener on the other side” is that it offers us such good value for money. Some possibilities:

• Find out if students have an equivalent saying in their language
• Ask students if they have ever been affected or influenced by the human notion that the expression illustrates
• Ask students to use the expression for the title of a story
• Use the expression to introduce comparative adjectives
• Use the expression to introduce positions of adverbs of frequency
• Write some colours on the board and ask students to invent new sayings for each one (the apples are always redder on the other side, the cows are always browner on the other side, etc).
• Use the expression to play word hangman but use whole words instead of individual letters (this procedure was mentioned in a previous posting).
• Drill it and use it to demonstrate that when the word “is” follows a noun that ends in -s, there is no contraction. (In other words, we might say “the sky’s always bluer ” but we don’t say, “the grass’s always greener“.)
• Chant it and practise elements sentence stress.
• Ask students to memorise it.

By studying the grammar of a sentence like this, students are also given an insight into the culture of English (compare it with a dead example that you might expect to see in a text book such as “Peter is taller than John”). By using sayings, expressions and other such idioms as the basis for grammar study, then, we might kill two birds with one stone (or catch two birds with one bean, as they say in Italy).

There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not we should teach idioms like these in the classroom. One of the problems is that you can teach a learner an idiom but that doesn’t mean that he or she will know how to use it correctly. When we look at how expert English speakers actually use idioms, things get quite interesting. Look at this poster from the 2007 TESOL-Spain conference:

The sub-heading reads: -Two birds, One stone-? This is referring to the theme of the conference - integrating content with language (i.e. teaching English while teaching other subjects such as maths, art, etc). The important thing is that the poster doesn’t state the idiom in its entirety. And of course, this type of ellipsis is very common in spoken language. We might just decide to say, “The grass is always greener“, or “Oh well, every cloud, eh?” (instead of “Every cloud has a silver lining“).

As well as cutting them short, we also like to make indirect references to sayings, expressions and similar idioms that are integrated into our culture. For example:

Or how about this one:

Idioms like these may exist in our minds in their full unadulterated forms but in the real world, it is a different story. Sometimes, the unconscious creativity of the human mind can cause things to get very complicated. Watch this clip and see if you can identify comedian Harry Hill’s use of a common English expression:

Did you put your finger on it? (see Harry Hill’s gesture at 1 minute, 3 seconds).

In the language classroom, we can teach students the ‘idealised’ forms and show them the ‘real’ ones. This in itself can build up linguistic awareness since pretty much anything we teach in the classroom is susceptible to change in the real world, especially when we are dealing with spoken English. There is a good article on this at Dave Willis’s website called The Logic of Spoken English.

One approach is to present students with idioms like these in their full forms for cultural and grammatical study. This can then be followed by exposure to the same idioms in real life. Two great resources for such material exist:

1. The Amazon website
2. Image libraries such as Getty and Corbis

The first of these sites is good for obtaining images of book and DVD covers that refer to idioms that combine words with pictures (see the two examples above). Look for these by typing key words into the search window (grass and greener, or kick and bucket, etc). The second is good for obtaining images of idioms such as the ones that follow.

“To burn down your bridges”

“Too many cooks spoil the broth”

Slideshows of images like these can be used to teach or revise the ‘perfect’ forms of expressions and saying. Learners may then build up un understanding of how such idioms are used as well as gain cultural knowledge of English. And although I can’t speak for all students, this seems to be what mine want.

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For a bit of further reading, I recommend a well-written article by Luke Prodromou on idiomaticity. It originally appeared in English Teaching Professional but can also be seen at onestopenglish if you are a subscriber.