TEACHING PHRASEOLOGISMS IN GERMAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Abstract

Although phraseologisms represent an essential part of everyday communication, they are often, when it comes to teaching foreign languages, completely neglected. We have to ask ourselves what is the cause for that and what we can do to change it. This paper provides an overview of answers to three basic questions of phraseodidactics: why teach phraseologisms, what should we teach and how should we teach them? Phraseologisms differ from other lexemes we teach in class and they have to be taught in a different way. That is why special attention in this paper is devoted to the question of how to teach phraseologisms. The paper contains a proposal for teaching phraseologisms which is based on Kuhn’s phraseological three-step model (recognize, understand and use a phraseologism) and it provides examples of exercises that are easily applied to teaching phraseologisms in other contexts.