I LOVE IDIOMS

About the Book

As non-native English speakers, we would probably find it difficult to understand even the most common idioms. We should understand the form of each idiomatic expression before we can use it correctly in a sentence, besides knowing its meaning. In this book, the list of 99 common idioms is in alphabetical order under each chapter that shows its category. Each idiom comes with its meaning and its form (verb, noun, adjective, adverb, or respective phrase) to ease understanding on how to use it as part of a complete sentence. This book attempts to provide an analogy to help us remember the meaning accordingly. Each comic strip illustrates an example for each idiom in terms of how we can use it in spoken English. It also attempts to reflect directly its figurative or literal meaning; or even both literal and figurative meanings in some cartoon illustrations. Hence, this book aims to make readers fall in love with idioms when learning them in easy and fun way through cartoon illustrations. Dr Shahida Sulaiman together with cartoonist ASAK and Dr Zarina Mustafa who specialises in English field, form a great team to make this book worthwhile to all readers.

About the Author

Dr Shahida Sulaiman (Dr Shahi) is an associate professor at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. She has been serving in the academic line since 2004. Her research fields include software engineering and knowledge management. As an academician, she has a strong interest in finding ways and strategies to ease learning mainly in English as a Second Language (ESL). As Information and Communication Technology (ICT) grows rapidly and most studies are in the English language, she believes one must master the language in order to be competitive. This book is hence one of her strategies to inspire readers to love English by learning the commonly used idioms in a fun and easy way. Ahmad Shafiq Ahmad Kamal (ASAK) is an aspiring young cartoonist. His first creative work was the illustration for a book entitled “Senangnya Cakap Inggeris” written by Dr Shahi. This book will be his first book with Dr Shahi that includes all his cartoons based on the concepts designed by Dr Shahi. Currently ASAK is creating his own cartoon characters for his own comic. Dr Zarina Mustafa is a senior lecturer at Universiti Sains Malaysia. She specialises in Curriculum & Instructions, and also in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Teaching has always been her passion. She has a colourful experience in the discipline, having had the opportunity to teach in daily secondary schools and also at the tertiary level. Her research area of interest is the sustainability of curriculum innovation, mainly on the adoption of task-based language teaching (TBLT) in the classrooms. As an educationist, she warmly welcomes this pedagogically designed book as a part of the endeavour to motivate fun learning of idioms.