Learning English Idioms

Idioms can be hard to understand, even after you learn what they mean. You can learn that a sitting duck means a person with no protection against attack, and still wonder: what do ducks have to do with it? When an idiom seems to make no sense, it is hard to remember. Pictures can help learners remember the meaning of new words, but idioms, with their many parts and the metaphors inside them, need pictures that are crafted with special care. Research shows that pictures work in both directions: the right picture keeps the meaning in memory, and the wrong picture can keep a mistake there instead. Every illustration in this app is designed to carry both parts of the idiom at once: the literal words you can see, and the figurative meaning behind them. When you remember the picture, you have a pathway back to both the words and what they mean. The app also explains, in plain language, why…