The purpose of this study is to reflect on the teaching and learning of lexis, in particular, phraseological units. We aim to show the importance of providing learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language with the knowledge and skills in using phraseological units, more specifically, idiomatic expressions. Starting from a theoretical base, we examine questions such as the problems regarding the conceptual definition of phraseological units or fixed forms, the need and relevance of lexical selection in the communicative and pedagogical ambit, the relevance of idiomatic expressions as an object of teaching and learning, as well as how to incorporate them in the classroom. Next we examine the types of exercises and activities proposed in six Spanish coursebooks in order to analyze how idiomatic expressions are presented. When defining the corpus, the fact that the coursebooks are widely used, both in secondary schools and in the private language schools, was taken into consideration. In addition, we chose coursebooks with differing methodological approaches published both in Spain and Brazil during the nineties, and classified them from basic to advanced level. Based on the analysis, we inferred that idiomatic expressions predominate in the more advanced levels, and that there seems to be little preoccupation with stimulating the learners to use the expressions more widely in other meaningful contexts.
lexis; idiomatic expressions; teaching; learning