I downloaded the Collins Easylearning French Idioms eBook (also available in print); I love how idioms are so much more than a linguistic feature; they tell stories and represent the country from which they originate. Here are my top ten French idioms from the book, in no particular order – I’m looking forward to trying a few of them out when I head to France over the summer for the second part of my year abroad.

Idioms, are perhaps the most complex part of any language learning experience as they are culturally relevant and usually seem to make no logical sense whatsoever to those as outsiders. Competent understanding and usage of idioms in a foreign language truly shows you that you are well on your way to mastering the language, and are pretty confident already. I am spending my year abroad as an English language assistant in Spain and so chose to use the English Idioms book in a few of my lessons to see how it can be used and if in fact using it was a benefit to my lessons. I also, as a language student, studied the Spanish idioms book.

Bex studies French and Spanish at Lancaster University and is spending her year abroad in Brussels and Granada. She tweets from @bexnobes and also regularly writes a blog about her year abroad adventures. Here she reviews eBooks against real books for language learning on your year abroad.