Teaching Figuartive Language

Something that really caught my interest in Chapter 7 was the part that discussed teaching children about figurative language on page 236. The reason for this is that it has always struck me as something that might prove very interesting to teach because the connection between figurative meaning and literal meanings of the phrases are often difficult to see for someone who has little experience with figurative language. What does the idiom "sick as a dog" mean to a child who isn't already acquainted with the phrase? For us, it might be easy, but for people who don't have a strong understanding of figurative language, the connection is often difficult to see, especially for young children who don't have much experience with it and tend to be more comfortable with literal word meanings (Thompkins, 236). Because of this, I'm very interested to read about possible methods of teaching figurative speech. This type of language is a part of every day speech and people often use it without thinking, so to not understand these sayings could potentially be detrimental to my future students. It also might prove to be an issue as my students move on with their educational career because written works often use figurative language to get across various points and not knowing how to decipher this language could leave them at a real disadvantage. So, I feel that it is quite important to further my knowledge on how to teach this subject.


There are a few methods that I've seen so far that strike me as being helpful in teaching this particular subject. For example, on page 236 of the textbook, Thompkins mentions that it could prove helpful to have the students make "idiom posters," which would show both meanings and, therefore, help students see and understand the connections between the meanings. Also, the website ReadWriteThink has this online tool, which strikes me as a potentially fun method of learning about figurative language, assuming that the students respond to it well. This site suggests having the students brainstorm possible examples (Or it gives a list of examples that can be used as well, but I think that I'd prefer to ask my students to think of them as those are the ones that are likely to have the most meaning to them because those are the ones that they will have heard at some point in their life and it made enough of an impression that they remember it.) and then discussing the meanings as a group. There is no way to cover all examples, but this will at least allow the students to get their feet wet and students can always bring in more examples if they wish to do so. As the website that I just posted and the book mention, it also important to teach the different types on figurative language also, such as similes and metaphors, as those will, almost definitely, come heavily into play as the students grow older and knowing how to recognize and use these methods will likely prove a benefit for the students.