Vol. 14 No. 85 (2025)
Articles

Idioms in academic writing: A Ukrainian university case

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  • Svetlana Danilina
Svetlana Danilina
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine.
Author Biography

[1] Ph.D. in Translation Studies, Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages for the Faculties of History and Philosophy, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2025.85.01.3

Published 2025-01-30

Keywords

  • Idioms, metaphorical language, academic writing, corpus data, formulaic competence.

How to Cite

Danilina, S. (2025). Idioms in academic writing: A Ukrainian university case. Amazonia Investiga, 14(85), 35–44. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2025.85.01.3

Copyright (c) 2025 Svetlana Danilina

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This study investigates the use of idiomatic expressions in academic writing by Ukrainian university students learning English as a foreign language. The research analyzes the frequency of idiom use in essays written by two groups of students: one group explicitly taught academic English idioms and a control group. Findings reveal that Ukrainian students employ idiomatic expressions more frequently than native English speakers, as evidenced by comparisons with the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus and the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE). Notably, even the control group exhibited higher idiomaticity than their native-speaker counterparts. These results highlight the importance of addressing idiomatic language in academic English instruction for non-native speakers. The study discusses the potential benefits and challenges of incorporating idioms into teaching materials and provides insights for educators aiming to improve the phraseological competence of their students.

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