How These Idioms Were Chosen
Which idioms to learn and which to teach is important for both students and teachers. While this decision can be made in a random manner, a better way is to examine a specific body of English material and decide which idioms are the most frequently found. This type of collection of material is called a corpus (the plural for corpus is corpora).
There are many corpora available. These include the Collins Cobuild Corpus in the United Kingdom and the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) in the United States. The MICASE corpus is a collection of recorded speech from the University of Michigan in the United States. The material includes lectures, casual office discussions and study group sessions in various faculties of the university. They are taken from one particular style or purpose of naturally occurring English. Different idioms will be used in a conversation, a novel, a news report or a scientific paper. Any list of idioms will be different depending on the English corpus that is used to compile that list. However, most corpora contain idioms that are common to all corpora and any list that is used will be composed of idioms that are often found in much English language material.
The MICASE corpus is easily available to anyone with Internet access and it is the corpus which was used to produce this list of the 100 Most Frequently Used English Idioms. The idioms that occur in this list of frequently used idioms are the most frequent idioms that are found in an academic setting in the United States.
There are many corpora available. These include the Collins Cobuild Corpus in the United Kingdom and the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) in the United States. The MICASE corpus is a collection of recorded speech from the University of Michigan in the United States. The material includes lectures, casual office discussions and study group sessions in various faculties of the university. They are taken from one particular style or purpose of naturally occurring English. Different idioms will be used in a conversation, a novel, a news report or a scientific paper. Any list of idioms will be different depending on the English corpus that is used to compile that list. However, most corpora contain idioms that are common to all corpora and any list that is used will be composed of idioms that are often found in much English language material.
The MICASE corpus is easily available to anyone with Internet access and it is the corpus which was used to produce this list of the 100 Most Frequently Used English Idioms. The idioms that occur in this list of frequently used idioms are the most frequent idioms that are found in an academic setting in the United States.
