On the Role of Phraseological Units in Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Adult Learners

One of the challenges of learning English for Iranian learners is “native-like” production of speech rarely achieved by even the most advanced learners. Unfortunately, it is common belief among Iranian English learners that knowledge of individual lexical items is the key to communicative competence. But alas! The outcome has shown this is counterproductive. As an anglicist teaching ESP in general and EAP in particular in my country, I feel responsible for shedding light on this issue inasmuch as I experience the lapse in my everyday professional work. It should be noted that in this Global Village, in which English is considered the Lingua Franca of science and technology, focusing on phraseological units as a sub-branch of lexical proficiency seems to be of paramount importance to avoid misunderstanding and miscommunication. The present article makes an effort to highlight the role of contextual usages of these units in TEFL to help the learners reach the desired native-like production of English speech.