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.
Drag has long been identified as the main reason for the loss of energy in fluid transmission like pipelines and other similar transportation channels. The main contributor to this drag is the viscosity as well as friction against the pipe walls, which will results in more pumping power consumption.
The aim in this study was first to understand the role of additives in the viscosity reduction and secondly to evaluate the drag reduction efficiency when blending with different solvents.
This research investigated flow increase (%FI) in heavy oil at different flow rates (2 to 10 m3/hr) in two pipes (0.0381 m & 0.0508 m) ID By using different additives (toluene and naphtha) with different concent
... Show MoreThe study aims to identify the relationship between Dogmatism and the behavioral problems among preparatory school students. To do this, the researcher adopted Rokeach’s scale of dogmatism, which was modified to be more appropriate of the Iraqi context. A sample of (300) students was chosen randomly to collect the needed data for the current study. To process the data, the researcher employed T-test, Pearson correlation coefficient, and Weighted Mean. The finding revealed that the study sample experience too many behavioral problems, as well as there is a positive strong relationship between Dogmatism and behavioral problems. To conclude, the researcher recommended holding counseling sessions targeting school students to mitigate
... Show MorePurpose: The research aims to explore the impact Business Intelligence System (BIS) and Knowledge Conversion Processes (KCP) in the Building Learning Organization (LO) in KOREK Telecom Company in Baghdad city.
Design/methodology/approach: in order to achieve the objectives of the research has been the development of a questionnaire prepared for this purpose and then has tested the search in the telecommunications sector, representatives of one of the telecommunications companies in Baghdad city, has therefore chosen KOREK Telecom company as a sample for research, and the choice was based on the best standard international companies to serve mobile communications in terms o
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The present study aimed to identify teaching problems which facing the teachers for first three grades classes, and if these problems different according to some variables teacher qualification, experience period, class grade). The study sample consist of (137 )
female teachers who teach the first three grades in Braimy city in Oman, teachers spread in five government schools. Both researchers developed questionnaire to measure problems faced by the mentioned teachers, consist of 50 questions distributed into 4 dimensions (teacher, students, the curriculum, the evaluations), Also researchers checked questionnaire validity and stability. The results indicate to: The most common probl
... Show MoreThis 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 MoreObjective: Assessment the psychological problems in patients with colorectal cancer, and to find out the
relationship between socio-demographic characteristics such as (age, sex, marital status, educational level,
and occupation) and psychological problems for those patients.
Methodology: A descriptive design is employed through the present study from 1
st July 2011 to 25
th December
2011 in order to study the quality of life in colorectal cancer patients with psychological problems.
A purposive (non probability) sample is selected for the study which includes (60) patients diagnosed with
colorectal cancer were treated in Mosul Oncology and Nuclear Medicine hospital or the patients who visited
the outpatient cl
Experimental investigations have been carried out to investigate the pH-control problems of industrial electroplating wastewater treatment plants. The accurate and sensitive PID control system could treat most problem and disturbances in the normal operation of the water treatment. However, conventional treatment was replaced by proprietary treatment agent called a QUASIL which was found to be more effective for a wide range of pH.
Discourse markers are expressions used to connect sentences to what comes before or after and indicate a speaker's attitude to what he is saying.As linguistic items, they have important functions in discourses of various styles or registers. And being connective elements, discourse markers relate sentences, clauses and paragraphs to each other. "One of the most prominent function of discourse markers, however, is to signal the kinds of relations a speaker perceives between different parts of the discourse". (Lenk 1997: 2) Through political discourse, different types of discourse markers are used. This paper deals with the importance and functions of discourse markers and tries to shed light on the kinds of discourse markers used in polit
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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
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