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In:Exploring and Exploiting Parallel Corpora of Spanish: The PaCorES corpus collection in language and translation education and research
Edited by Irene Doval and M. Teresa Sánchez Nieto
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 129] 2026
► pp. 63–86

Exploring idioms of feelings and emotions through an English–Spanish parallel corpus

A teaching proposal for university EFL learners

 | Universidad Internacional de La Rioja
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
This research presents a pedagogical proposal that integrates the English-Spanish parallel corpus (PaEnS) into the teaching of English idioms related to feelings and emotions. After a brief overview of the role of parallel corpora in foreign language teaching and learning, and a look at the definition, classification, and usefulness of English idioms as well as their challenges in translation, the present chapter outlines four context-based, data-driven tasks. Specifically, the tasks involve guessing the meaning of the idioms from context, corpus exploration, idiom classification, and translation analysis. Additionally, the research aims to (1) explore how selected English idiomatic expressions are translated into Spanish in the corpus, and (2) identify cross-linguistic patterns and translation strategies that can enhance learners’ understanding of figurative expressions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of the literature
    • 2.1Parallel corpora and FL teaching and learning
    • 2.2English idioms: Definition, classification, usefulness, and translation challenges
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Practical application: Teaching idioms of feelings and emotions through PaEnS
    • 4.1Session 1 (2 hours)
      • 4.1.1Guessing the meaning from context
      • 4.1.2Corpus exploration
    • 4.2Session 2 (2 hours)
      • 4.2.1Idiom classification
      • 4.2.2Translation practice
  • 5.Final considerations and further research
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
References (32)
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