Idioms are a very important part of the English language: you are told that if you want to go far (succeed) you should pull your socks up (make a serious effort to improve your behaviour, the quality of your work, etc.) and use your grey matter (brain).1 Learning and translating idioms have always been very difficult for foreign language learners. The present paper explores some of the reasons why English idiomatic expressions are difficult to learn and translate. It is not the aim of this paper to attempt a comprehensive survey of the vast amount of material that has appeared on idioms in Adams and Kuder (1984), Alexander (1984), Dixon (1983), Kirkpatrick (2001), Langlotz (2006), McCarthy and O'Dell (2002), and Wray (2002), among others. The paper concentrates on idioms as a learning-translation problem; it makes no claim to be comprehensive or academically rigorous. Leech (1989) defines an idiom as follows: “An idiom is a group of two or more words which we have to treat as a unit in learning a language. We cannot arrive at the meaning of the idiom just by adding together the meanings of the words inside it. E.g.John and Mary usedto be hardup (='They had very little money'.)”(P.186) To be more exact, an idiom is a sequence of words which is semantically and syntactically restricted, so that they function as a single unit. From a semantic point of view, the meanings of the individual words cannot be summed to produce the meanings of the idiomatic expression as a whole. Thus, fly off the handle, which means lose one's temper, cannot be understood in terms of the meanings of fly, off, or handle. The idiom phrase hot air, which means empty or boastful talk, is neither hot nor air; with hot air we are dealing with a set phrase where the meaning cannot be suggested on the basis of the two constituent words. The idiomatic meaning of spill the beans in So who spilt the beans (=told the secret) about her affair with David? has nothing to do with beans or with spilling in its literal sense. The foreign-language learner is left trying to figure out where and how the beans were spilt. From a syntactic viewpoint, the constituent parts of an idiom often do not permit the usual variability they display in other contexts. The point to be emphasized here is this: most idioms do not lend themselves easily to manipulation by speakers and writers; they are invariable and must be learned as wholes, but concord ofnumber, person and gender in the idiom phrase is still necessary, i.e. the verbs must be put into the correct form, and pronouns must agree with their antecedents: I don't give a hoot for her opinion! 2 • She doesn't give a hoot for my opinion! etc.)║He won, but only by the skin of his teeth2• She won, but only by the skin of her teeth• Iwon, but only by the skin ofmy teeth,I had to run for the train, and caught it by the skin of myteeth, etc.║He kept pullingmy arm, throwing me off my balance 2 • She kept pulling his arm, throwing him off his balance • We kept pullingher arm, throwingher offher balance, etc.2 The present paper is divided into five parts, as follows: Part I: An Overview; PART II: Learner’s Difficulties with Idioms; PART III: Some Pedagogical recommendations and Suggestions about Idioms; Part IV: Activities to Practice Idiomatic Expressions; Part V: Summary and Conclusion.
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The research aims to know the reverberation of the the electronica news bulletin of the ministry of higher education and scientific research in the newspapers of: (AL-Taakhi, AL-Zaman, ALAdala,AL-Sabah and Baghdad) for period from 2nd October 2011 to 1st November 2011 to explain its activity and advantage for the other newspapers and to show the importance which the newspapers showed for the study of the news subject in the bulletin, as well as,to show the proportional differences in which the newspapers interested in the subjects of the published news, and to reach to the results which lead us to good conclusions for the service of decision owner and open new horizons for the researchers to expanding in the s
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In this paper to isolate and study the properties of the cyclooxygenase-2 (EC: 1.14.99.1) enzyme in the blood of a patient suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and study the effect of natural products of the Soapwort on the activity of purified enzyme. The study involves taking 30 ml of blood from an adult woman 40 years old, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis disease for 13 years. Serum is separated and subjected to a series of purification processes including: precipitation by ammonium sulfate, filtration by centrifugation radiator, dialysis in presence of ammonium bicarbonate, separation using the technology of ion exchange, lipholization and then estimating approximate molecular weight of the enzyme using gel filtration techni
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Purpose: As a result of the sudden and ill-considered trade openness of Iraq after 2003 to the countries of the world in general and the neighboring countries in particular, and in the absence of the necessary support for the national productive forces and the lack of effective standardization and quality control devices, this led to the exposure of most local products, especially agricultural ones, to decline and inability On the competition and thus dumping the Iraqi market, especially the agricultural products, with imported products, this study came to find out the effect that dumping has on the local production of chicken meat and the impact of that impact on the size of the food gap, and whether the results of the practica
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Background: Chronic cigarette smoking is one of the major risk factors for coronary artery disease. However, it has additional cardiac adverse effects independent of coronary atherosclerosis. Patient and Methods: After informed consent and perm- ission from the review board of the hospital, 80 healthy subjects who were classified as smokers or non-smokers were included in the study. They were examined by standard echocardiography protocol which was followed by two-dimensional speckle tracking to assess the functions of the right ventricle. Results: The tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE) was significantly reduced in smokers as compared to non-smokers (P < 0.05). The tricuspid flow peak late diastolic velocity (A wave) was sig
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This study aims to know the role of strategic leadership to achieving competitiveness in industrial establishments by identifying the respondents’ perceptions about the level of availability of dimensions of leadership strategies (creativity and innovation, risk tolerance, available opportunities) in Bashir Al-Siksek & Partners Company for the manufacture of sanitary and plastic ware in Gaza strip
To achieve this, a questionnaire was developed and distributed to a sample of managers, auditors, accountants, and administrative employees in the study sample company. The questionnaire tool was distributed to 60 employees and employees, of which (52) were retrieved, or 86.6%, and (8) were excluded for la
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Background: Economic Globalization affects work condition by increasing work stress. Chronic work stress ended with burnout syndrome.
Objectives: To estimate the prevalence of burnout syndrome and the association of job title, and violence with it among physicians in Baghdad, and to assess the burnout syndrome at patient and work levels by structured interviews.
Subjects and Methods: A cross section study was conducted on Physicians in Baghdad. Sampling was a multistage, stratified sampling to control the confounders in the design phase. A mixed qualitative and quantitative
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