Barking up the wrong tree, ...and other idioms that don't work

This entire year, one of the big ideas that I’ve been learning is how to communicate clearly and effectively.  One large barrier to this with my students is my common use of idioms. 

First, a definition of an idiom:

id·i·om [id-ee-uhm]

noun - an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, as kick the bucket  or hang one's head,  or from the general grammatical rules of a language, as the table round  for the round table,  and that is not a constituent of a larger expression of like characteristics.

1.  a language, dialect, or style of speaking peculiar to a people
2. a construction or expression of one language whose parts correspond to elements in another language but whose total structure or meaning is not matched in the same way in the second language.

Here are just a few of the idioms I’ve used this year, and the confused responses I received from my students, especially the Chinese and Korean students.

“I’m under the gun.”   (Pause, plus disturbed look from student) “What gun?”

“Play it by ear” (Laughter) “What are we doing with our ears?”

“Close, but no cigar” (No response)

“Well, let me play devil’s advocate for a moment… do you know what that means?” “…no.”

“Don’t beat a dead horse” (Laughter) “What? Mrs. Westby, you’re crazy.”

“I’m running around like a chicken with its head cut off” “Um…Why?”

“The ball is in your court” (Confused look) “What ball?”

“It’s like water off a duck’s back” (No expression) “What does that mean?

So, as you can see, using an idiom, or at time even a metaphor, is not to my advantage while counseling students, much less having any kind of conversation with students.

For fun, this past week, I went on a quest one lunch period to find Korean Idioms.  Here’s the most popular ones that I heard (obviously translated into English):

“Eating a rice cake lying down” and “Eating cold soup” both mean “It’s really easy.”

“You’ve lost your cow but still finish the barn” means “You’re trying to fix something after it has already gone wrong.”

So, morals of the story:

1.  Every culture has their own idioms, which is a really cool thing.
2. Idioms are really not translatable in an easy way, unless you want to explain it…which is the opposite goal of using an idiom in the first place.
3. If you want to communicate effectively to Asian high school students, don’t use idioms.