Teaching english idioms of happiness and sadness through conceptual metaphors in Vietnamese context

94 Pham Thai Bao Ngoc. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 94-102 
TEACHING ENGLISH IDIOMS OF HAPPINESS AND 
SADNESS THROUGH CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS 
IN VIETNAMESE CONTEXT 
PHAM THAI BAO NGOC 
University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University HCMC 
ngocpham1799@gmail.com 
 (Received: February 06, 2017; Revised: February 21, 2017; Accepted: March 15, 2017) 
ABSTRACT 
Idioms have long been regarded as a big challenge for EFL learners. With recent developments in cognitive 
linguistics, the method of teaching idioms has shifted from rote learning to raising the learner’s awareness of 
conceptual metaphors (CM). This paper provides support for the adoption of CM in teaching idioms thanks to its 
effectiveness in enhancing the comprehension and retention of idioms. Because specific techniques of this approach 
have not been thoroughly explored, the paper attempts to provide and analyze CM-related activities for teaching idioms 
in EFL classrooms, more specifically teaching English idioms of happiness and sadness in Vietnamese context. 
Keywords: Conceptual metaphors; Idioms; Mapping. 
1. Introduction 
Idioms are usually defined as groups of 
words whose meaning cannot be inferred from 
the meanings of their individual words 
(Kövecses, 2002). They include metaphors, 
metonymies, similes, phrasal verbs, and 
others. These expressions have been 
extensively used in all spoken and written 
genres of discourse (O’Dell and McCarthy, 
2010); it was estimated that an English native 
speaker may use approximately 20 million 
idioms throughout his or her lifetime of 60 
years (Cooper, 1998). Due to the substantial 
number of idioms and their pervasive use, 
lack of idiomatic knowledge can be a great 
hindrance to EFL learners’ communication 
with native speakers. 
However, learning English idioms is not 
an easy task. As Liu (2003) stated, idioms are 
“notoriously difficult” to the learners of 
English due to their “rather rigid structure, 
quite unpredictable meaning and fairly 
extensive use” (p.671). Moreover, idioms are 
not only cross-linguistic but also cross-
cultural phenomena (Kövecses, 2002). 
According to Cooper (1998), even students 
with profound knowledge of grammar and 
vocabulary still feel difficult to understand 
and use idiomatic language if they are not 
aware of the cultural diversity underlying 
idioms. 
Despite the importance of learning 
English idioms and learners’ increasing 
difficulties in comprehending and using them, 
this area of language teaching is often ignored 
in EFL classrooms and textbooks. Among 
contemporary English textbooks used in 
Vietnamese high schools, there are only 24 
idioms presented in three textbooks, i.e. 
English 10, English 11 and English 12 
without any further practice or consolidation 
(Tran, 2013). Many Vietnamese teachers even 
tend to avoid using or teaching idioms in 
classrooms because they believe that idioms 
are too difficult for learners, which leads to 
Vietnamese students’ poor idiomatic 
competence (Tran, 2012). 
Due to the alleged arbitrary nature of 
idioms and their fixed structures, it was 
believed that rote memorization is the only 
way for learners to acquire these expressions 
(Kövecses, 2002). However, this learning 
 Pham Thai Bao Ngoc. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 94-102 95 
method seems too time-and effort-consuming 
for the students as the have to acquire a great 
number of idioms by learning them separately 
and passively. Thus, adopting an effective 
method for idiom teaching has attracted great 
concerns among researchers and teachers. In 
recent years, with the significant development 
of cognitive linguistics, educators have shifted 
from traditional methods of idiom teaching to 
raising learner’s awareness of conceptual 
metaphor, the underlying motivation behind 
idioms (Boers and Lindstromberg, 2008). This 
article supports the cognitive-oriented method 
for teaching idiomatic language and also 
attempts to demonstrate how to teach idioms, 
specifically idioms of happiness and sadness, 
comprehensively via conceptual metaphors in 
Vietnamese context. 
2. Traditional and Cognitive Views of 
Idioms and Idiom Teaching 
2.1. Traditional view of idioms and 
idiom teaching 
Idioms are traditionally considered as 
linguistic expressions that are “isolated from 
each other” and “independent of any conceptual 
system” (Kövecses, 2002, p.200). In other 
words, they are simply a matter of language 
that has arbitrary nature with certain syntactic 
properties and meanings. In this view, teaching 
idioms is simply providing a list of idioms 
without systematic arrangements, with their 
meanings and examples. As a result, learners 
learn the targeted expressions by attempting to 
memorize these discrete and isolated entities. 
This type of rote learning may result in sho ... xplain briefly why students’ 
comprehension of conceptual metaphors can 
facilitate their learning of idioms and 
vocabulary in general. 
Activity three: “CM Motivation Discovery” 
To familiarize students with conceptual 
 Pham Thai Bao Ngoc. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 94-102 99 
metaphors, the teacher can clarify that these 
metaphors are, in fact, grounded, or motivated 
by, human experience (Kövecses, 2002). Take 
the pair of HAPPY IS UP and SAD IS 
DOWN as an example, students are asked to 
look at nine pictures on the board again, 
examine differences between postures and 
facial expressions of happy and sad people, 
and discover how it is related to the 
conceptual metaphors. They can find some 
clues to this question by examining the 
pictures on the board and doing the gap-filling 
exercise. These metaphors arise from the fact 
that as humans we have upright bodies. Thus, 
the erect posture typically goes with positive 
physical states which may lead to positive 
emotional states, whereas the opposite is true 
with a drooping posture (Lakoff and Johnson, 
1980). Likewise, smiles in most cultures 
involve an upward turning of the lips, while 
frowning causes the edges of the mouth to 
descend. 
Activity four: “Mapping Discovery” 
In an EFL context, students tend to fail to 
perceive the conceptual metaphors and the 
underlying structures between a source 
domain and a target one. An insufficient 
knowledge of metaphoric mappings also 
prevents learners from guessing the meaning 
of unfamiliar idioms correctly though these 
idioms share the same conceptual metaphor 
with those they have already learned. Hence, 
teaching students about metaphoric mappings 
and how to associate a more concrete or 
physical concept with a more abstract and 
unfamiliar concept are a prerequisite for 
learners’ acquisition of idioms (Chen and Lai, 
2013). As for teaching idioms of happiness 
and sadness, the teacher should explain to 
students about metaphorical mappings and 
then instruct them how to discover the 
metaphoric mappings of the conceptual 
metaphors underlying the target idioms. 
Activity five: “Discovering What’s Missing” 
While previous activities focus on the 
meaning of idiomatic expressions through 
awareness of their semantic motivation, this 
activity emphasizes the form or the lexical 
composition by noticing their phonological 
motivation. According to Boers and 
Lindstromberg (2008), students’ awareness of 
alliteration and rhyme used in idioms to 
produce catchy sound patterns can increase 
their form retention. 
To prepare for this activity, the teacher 
chooses those expressions that show 
alliteration or assonance from the list of 
previously-taught idioms and add some more. 
Some examples include jump for joy, heavy 
heart, down in the dumps, down in the mouth, 
doom and gloom, as happy as Larry, as 
happy as a clam (at high tide), as snug as a 
bug in a rug, as happy as a horse in hay
1
, and 
so on. These idioms with one deleted keyword 
are presented in clear, brief and meaningful 
sentences. The teacher can make this gap-
filling exercise easier by revealing the first 
letter of the missing word. For example: 
Rowena j________ for joy when she 
heard that she’s won first prize. 
Steve was down in the d__________ for 
the longest time after his breakup with Eve. 
I was as happy as a c___________ living 
in Hawaii; the beaches were beautiful, I 
played lots of outdoor sports, and the people 
were so nice. 
Despite several setbacks, it is not all 
doom and g_________ for the England team. 
Each sentence has two versions which are 
written on two separate cards so that different 
versions display different keywords. For example: 
Rowena jumped for j__________ when she heard that she’s won first prize. 
Rowena j_____________ for joy when she heard that she’s won first prize. 
100 Pham Thai Bao Ngoc. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 94-102 
The students are asked to work in pairs to 
find out the missing words in each sentence as 
soon as possible to become the winner. Each 
pair has a set of cards which are placed upside 
down on their desk. The students turn over 
one card at a time and attempt to fill the gap. 
If they are uncertain of their answer, they turn 
the card face down again and they will have 
the answer later when the corresponding 
version of that expression (with the key word 
they want to know and the other word is 
missing) is turned over. After the students 
finish this game, the teacher can ask them 
whether they notice any special feature of the 
target idioms presented in the game to raise 
their awareness of alliteration and rhyme used 
in these idioms. 
Since the understanding of conceptual 
metaphors only helps students comprehend 
and recall the meaning of idioms but does not 
guarantee their retention of form (Vasiljevic, 
2011), this form-focused activity is important 
to develop productive knowledge of idiomatic 
language, which involves retrieving and 
producing appropriate spoken or written form. 
Besides, this activity helps recall the idiomatic 
expressions in the previous activities, and 
offers students a chance to practice them and 
learn new ones in a relaxing environment. The 
high rate of success also gives students a 
sense of achievement and satisfaction. 
The two following activities are designed 
to raise learners’ awareness of the universality 
and variations of conceptual metaphors by 
examining the idiomatic expressions cross-
linguistically and cross-culturally. As 
Deignan, Gabrys, and Solska (1997) states, 
this is a useful approach to increasing 
learners’ reception and production of idioms. 
Activity six: “Discovering the 
Universality of CM” 
This activity highlights the fact that some 
conceptual metaphors can be shared across 
several cultures and languages thanks to 
certain similarities in experiences and 
perceptions. Firstly, the students are asked to 
work in groups and find out the equivalents of 
the idiomatic expressions. Then, the teacher 
distributes another handout and asks the 
students to compare idiomatic expressions 
that have similar meanings in English and 
Vietnamese. After placing the Vietnamese 
expressions in the right groups according to 
their conceptual metaphors, the students 
discover the similarity between the two 
languages, and then add more equivalents of 
their own. 
Activity seven: “Discovering Cultural 
Variations in CM” 
In addition to universality, there are 
cultural variations in metaphors. English and 
Vietnamese can have different conceptual 
metaphors. For example, whereas the English 
consider the heart as a seat of emotion, as in 
fill her heart with happiness, heartsick, and 
heartbroken, Vietnamese people use the belly 
and its organs such as stomach, liver, and 
intestine as a center of feelings, for example, 
lòng đau như cắt, vừa lòng, thấy ưng cái 
bụng, nở từng khúc ruột. Besides, one 
language may have a conceptual metaphor 
that does not exist in the other language. For 
instance, whereas the metaphor SAD IS 
BLUE is common in English, as in feeling 
blue, baby blues, and Monday morning blues, 
it does not exist in Vietnamese language. EFL 
learners usually find it hard to understand and 
recollect those idiomatic expressions, whose 
conceptual metaphors are distinct from their 
native language. Thus, this is the teacher’s 
responsibility to foster students’ awareness of 
such differences and help them apply 
conceptual metaphors to understand the target 
idioms. 
With this activity, the teacher can explain 
to the students the reason why there are such 
variations in the two languages and cultures. 
Knowledge of etymology, as well as different 
lifestyle and ideologies of medicine in each 
country is necessary for an adequate 
 Pham Thai Bao Ngoc. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 94-102 101 
explanation (Nguyen, 2012). 
Activity eight: “Picture this!” 
Students play this game in groups of five. 
Each member receives two cards and is told to 
keep their cards to themselves. There is one 
previously encountered idiom on each card. 
The Students take turns to mime or draw to 
elucidate literal meaning of the idioms so that 
their partners can guess what they are. The 
image in each selected idiom must be easy to 
be depicted by drawing or miming. For 
instance, as happy as a clam at high tide can 
be depicted by drawing a clam with a smiley 
or using two hands to mime the two shells of 
a clam. The group finishing the game first is 
the winner. 
This activity is based on the findings of 
an empirical research by Boers, 
Lindstromberg, Littlemore, Stengers, and 
Eyckmans (2008). Pictorial elucidation and 
mime are proved to enhance the retention of 
meaning. To complete the task, each student 
has to make a cognitive effort to think of a 
suitable drawing or mime to illustrate the 
meaning of the idioms. Using pictures and 
body gestures explicitly to illustrate meaning 
can help stimulate dual coding of information, 
especially for those whose learning style does 
not help them create sufficient mental images 
from the previous activities. This conscious 
attempt is deemed beneficial to learners’ 
comprehension and retention. 
At the end of the lesson, the teacher can 
ask the students to work in pairs and ‘retell’ the 
story about an extremely happy or unhappy 
experience shared at the beginning. However, 
this time they should try to integrate as many 
idiomatic expressions as possible. Finally, they 
compare the first version (before learning 
metaphors and idioms) with the second one 
(after learning metaphors and idioms) and 
evaluate the effectiveness of applying such 
idiomatic language. 
4. Conclusion 
This paper aims to support the adoption 
of cognitive approach to teaching English 
idioms in Vietnamese context by applying the 
Conceptual Metaphor Theory to design 
various idiom-focused activities for the 
classroom. These activities require students to 
play an active role in their language 
acquisition with conceptual metaphors as an 
organizer and motivator of English idioms. By 
clarifying the motivation behind several 
idiomatic expressions, these activities help to 
relieve students’ burden of rote learning, 
facilitate systematic and insightful learning, 
enhance their comprehension and retention of 
English idioms, and heighten their awareness 
of cultural universality and variations in 
English and Vietnamese idioms. 
Importantly, this paper does not 
recommend using conceptual metaphors as a 
substitute for other methods of teaching 
idioms. In fact, these CM-related activities 
should be considered as part of a learning 
program and integrated with other approaches 
to teach vocabulary in general and idioms in 
particular. Rather than adopting a single 
method in teaching idioms, EFL teachers can 
use various techniques to enhance their 
students’ idiomatic knowledge and inspire 
them with innovative activities. Then, the use 
of conceptual metaphors should be seen as an 
additional channel for idiom acquisition. 
Despite the potential benefits of this 
cognitive approach in idiom teaching and 
learning, few studies about this topic have 
been conducted in Vietnam. Hence, further 
practical implementations and empirical 
evidence are needed to validate the impacts of 
conceptual metaphors on Vietnamese 
learners’ acquisition of English idioms in 
particular and vocabulary in general 
102 Pham Thai Bao Ngoc. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 94-102 
Note 
1
 The expressions such as as happy as a clam (at high tide), as snug as a bug in a rug, and as happy as a horse in 
hay are surface realization of the conceptual metaphor A HAPPY PERSON IS AN ANIMAL (THAT LIVES 
WELL). (Kövecses, 2002). 
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