Teaching Idioms to Chinese International Students through Multimedia

Native speakers tend to use idioms to express specific meaning and make language vivid. However, using idioms sometimes causes problems for ESL learners to understand, because the idioms always have figurative meaning. It is necessary for international students to strengthen their ability to understand and use idioms, because the idioms also contain many culture meanings. This project explores research in vocabulary teaching and using multimedia in ESL learning to create a handbook of learning idioms for the target group of college level Chinese international students. It contains idioms selected from visual and audio materials, such as movies, documentaries, pop songs, and TV shows. It encourages students to practice using social medias and internet tools. Classic activities, such as crossword puzzles, and new activities that are more subjective are provided at the end of each handbook chapter, aiming to enhance students’ ability to speak and write, in addition to the ability to listen and read