A review of the difficulties Spanish-Americans and Mexican-Americans encounter in learning English, caused by a lack of knowledge of common idioms and figures of speech in current usage, leads to a discussion of two pilot studies in which the frequency of occurrence of idiomatic and figurative constructions in the reading materials presented to ninth grade classes in Texas and New Mexico is determined. Another experiment involving a class of 15 students, tested for linguistic proficiency in English and taught idioms and figures of speech for six weeks through various innovative approaches, is examined. (RL)