VI Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2014

A number of teachers of English as a second language maintain that foreign students should not be taught English phraseology or idioms as it may 'spoil' their 'received' English. We believe those teachers have a very vague idea of phraseology (for the definitions see: [Кунин 1972: 6; 1996: 5]). Actually, they think of slang and jargon set expressions as idioms.

But the matter is that it is the lowest layer of the language, which is described in special dictionaries, such as by R. Spears, for instance.

Being an analytic language, English is extremely rich in idioms, and 'although it is possible to converse correctly in non-idiomatic English, a student with only a superficial knowledge of English idioms will find himself at a serious disadvantage in his reading, and even more so when he takes part in discussions and debates' [Gulland, Hinds-Howell 1994: 7]. There are so many colloquial phraseological units belonging to common literary style that it does not even occur to native speakers that they make use of idioms which need to be explained to foreigners: to be in two minds – 'to be undecided' [Gulland, Hinds-Howell 1994: 115], to change one's mind – 'to make a new and different decision or choice' [Seidl, McMordie 1978: 32], it stands to reason – 'there is only one conclusion to be drawn' [Gulland, Hinds-Howell 1994: 117].

Doubtless, second language learners, who are faced with a well-defined domain in the foreign language, need to be taught, that vagueness and ambiguity is likely to decrease in the case of international idioms, i.e. those having equivalents identical in form and meaning in other languages of the world, such as money laundering, meaning 'the process by which the illegal source of proceeds is concealed by means of financial transactions or any other means to make it appear legitimate', for which the Russian equivalent is: отмываниеденег. But in business and finance, such ambiguity may lead to misunderstandings, which may sometimes have very serious consequences. That is why awareness of the important differences between one's own culture and other cultures has become a growing issue in fields such as Business English.

We consider it a misconception that the LSP teacher ought to be an expert in subjects of business, economics or finance. As a matter of fact, domain-specific language teachers do not teach the fundamentals of economic theory, nor business strategies, nor perfect management practice. Learners with limited experience who need to get information in those spheres of knowledge have to seek it from other sources. In an approach that focuses on the learner's professional knowledge and experience the language teacher's task is to train the students of business and finance to communicate in English about the subject they are specialized in.

Evidently, Business English, like other registers in given domains, involves a certain amount of specific terminology [Fedulenkova 2006: 122]. What puzzles beginners is being unable to decipher the meaning of a financial, economic or business term because it is of idiomatic origin [Федуленкова, Коваленко 2009: 368]. Examples: (a) grey wave, meaning 'a company that is thought to be potentially profitable and ultimately a good investment, but that is unlikely to fulfil expectations in the near future; the fruits of an investment in the present should be available when the investor has grey hair' [Oxford Dictionary 1997: 160]; (b) the original maturity, meaning 'the length of time from the opening agreement to the final repayment date' [Oxford Dictionary 1997: 218], (c) to be in the black, meaning 'to be in credit' as in the statement: 'After making losses for the last six years, we are at last in the black.' [Gulland, Hinds-Howell 1994: 21].

In fact, teaching practice testifies: it is not only beginners but advanced business students as well who find great difficulty in decoding such terms since, being phraseological units with complete transference of meaning of their components, they are indeed very difficult to identify, even if the learners are experts in business and economics. Let the ESP students, for instance, try and guess the meaning of such financial terms as a) Monte Carlo technique, b) Wilson formula, c) Massachusettes rule, d) Delphi method, e) Ockham's razor and the like and you will see that they will be unable to do it without assistance or looking up dictionaries. The meanings of the terms are as follows: a) method of statistical tests, b) means to find out the most economical volume of order, c) code of reasonable behaviour while investing money according to the letter of confidence, d) method of expert estimation, e) law of minimal admittance in the economic model.

Even if the student encounters an idiomatic term with partial transference of meaning – when some components of the phrasal term are used in their direct lexical meaning – it is often the case that he needs the LSP teacher's help to disambiguate the expression. For example, the meaning of the word combination a sleeping partner does not imply any sexual intercourse. On the contrary it implies quite a certain kind of business dealings between individuals where the person who supplies money for the business or some other enterprise does not appear in public and does not take part in the meetings of the stock holders, but only receives his share of profits.

Now we would like to press the point that the ultimate practical aim of teaching a foreign language is to help LSP students to acquire complete mastery of the form and content of the language, so that they can fully and freely communicate using vocabulary items, idioms and grammatical constructions correctly and appropriately.

References

Кунин А.В. Курс фразеологии современного английского языка: Учеб. для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз. – 2-е изд., перераб. – Москва: Высшая школа, Дубна: Изд. центр "Феникс", 1996. – 381 с.

Кунин А.В. Фразеология современного английского языка: Опыт систематизированного описания. – Москва: Издательство "Международные отношения", 1972.

Федуленкова Т.Н., Коваленко В.В. Вопросы дифференциации терминов-фразеологизмов в словарной дефиниции // Языки профессиональной коммуникации: Сб. ст. участников IV Международной науч. конф. 3-5 декабря 2009 г. – Челябинск: ЧелГУ, 2009. – С. 366-368.

Fedulenkova T. English phraseological units as specialised terms in specific domains // Collocations and Idioms 1: Abstracts of the 1st Nordic Conference on Syntactic Freezes, May 19-20 2006. – Joensuu: University of Joensuu, 2006. – P. 122-123.

Gulland D.M., Hinds-Howell D.G. The Penguin Dictionary of English Idioms. – Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, 1994.

Oxford Dictionary of Finance and Banking: From international to personal finance. – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Seidl J., McMordie W. English Idioms and How to Use Them. – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.

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