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.
The organization and coordination of any communication is based on the system of turn-taking which refers to the process by which a participant in a conversation takes the role of speaker. The progression of any conversation is achieved by the change of roles between speaker and hearer which, in its turn, represents the heart of the turn-taking system. The turn-taking system is not a random process but it is a highly organized process governed by a set of rules. Thus, this system has certain features and rules which exist in any English communicative process. These rules, if applied by speakers, help to achieve successful exchange of turns in any conversation. This paper attempts to present full exposition of the concepts of conversation
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The aim of the present research is to identify the test wisdom and the preoccupation with learning and psychological tension among postgraduate students at the University of Samarra according to the variables of the department, gender, age, and employee or non-employee, and revealing the relationship between the test wisdom and the preoccupation with learning and psychological tension. The research sample consisted of (75) students randomly selected from postgraduate students at the college of Education. The researcher applies test –wisdom of (Mellman & Ebel) and measurement of preoccupation with learning prepared by (Al-zaabi 2013) also, the researcher used the scale of t
... Show MoreIt is known that life is as series of variety of difficult problems that individual looks
forward to overcome so as to achieve adaptation and to reach the desired aims .The transition
of the students from the school stage to the stage of the university is actually regarded a
dramatic change where students face when they enter university life that differs from what
they lived in secondary school.
The executive functions are considered the main element that participate in solving the
problems of high orders , because it involves the mental abilities that assist individual to
think and initiative as well as solving problems .
These functions include operational planning and the activated memory and inhibition of
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Assimilation is defined ,by many phoneticians like Schane ,Roach ,and many others, as a phonological process when there is a change of one sound into another because of neighboring sounds.This study investigates the phoneme assimilation as a phonological process in English and Arabic and it is concerned specifically with the differences and similarities in both languages. Actually ,this study reflects the different terms which are used in Arabic to refer to this phenomenon and in this way it shows whether the term 'assimilation ' can have the same meaning of 'idgham' in Arabic or not . Besides, in Arabic , this phenomenon is discussed from&nb
... Show MoreCurrent search aims to identify the creative thinking of the kindergarten teachers and
solving professional problems among kindergarten teachers skills, and whether the level of
creative thinking in solving professional problems, according on marital status years of
service academic achievement of teachers as well as to identify the correlation between the
two variables the current sample consisted of (300) teachers to achieve the objectives of the
stndy , the researcher used two measures, one to measure creative thinking and the other to
measure the solution to the problems of professional kindergarten teachers skills. It has been
shown. validity and reliability of the two measures. The present stndy aims to identif
The subject of youth care of important issues in view of what constitutes the importance
to the development of societies in general and as much as enjoy young people in any society
are good psychological health and agree psychosocial be healthy to be effective to invest their
energies and their potential for the progress of that society and development of the social
aspects and economic. The universities of the most important educational institutions that
provide care for young people, they are as well as providing information and expertise
necessary to prepare young people for life and the development of mental abilities, they are
different activities that will satisfy their needs physical, psychological, social and
Many consumers of electric power have excesses in their electric power consumptions that exceed the permissible limit by the electrical power distribution stations, and then we proposed a validation approach that works intelligently by applying machine learning (ML) technology to teach electrical consumers how to properly consume without wasting energy expended. The validation approach is one of a large combination of intelligent processes related to energy consumption which is called the efficient energy consumption management (EECM) approaches, and it connected with the internet of things (IoT) technology to be linked to Google Firebase Cloud where a utility center used to check whether the consumption of the efficient energy is s
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This study focuses on Social Protection Net in Iraq considered as one of the phases of social sponsorship taking care of the weak category inside society after the increased poverty such as begging, unemployment and theft… etc. which was a product of striken poverty evoked by the events that Iraqi society have passed through. Accordingly, social sponsorship law number (126) 1980 was unable to solve those problems, there springs a need for building a social protection when the Social Protection Net law started working in Iraq on 1/12/2005 according to a schedule for social assistance depending on number of family members, including new social sections such as the unemployed, blind, orphans underage and other weak sections inside society
... Show MoreThe current research seeks to identify the most important humanitarian issues of a sacred and very important group in all the heavenly religions and human societies, namely the elderly, to identify their significant problems and health problems, and What are the effects of these problems on their mental health and which is the ultimate goal of human resources in All parts of the world? The study relied on what is available from the sources in the literature starting from the messages of heaven and the Islamic religion followed with humanitarian, social, legal and psychological postulates. The research included four systematic chapters included the definition research and identification of the problem, importance, objectives and terminolo
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