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.
Globally, buildings use about 40% of energy. Many elements, such as the physical properties of the structure, the efficiency of the cooling and heating systems, the activity of the occupants, and the building’s sustainability, affect the energy consumption of a building. It is really difficult to predict how much energy a building will need. To improve the building’s sustainability and create sustainable energy sources to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion, estimating the building's energy use is necessary. This paper explains the energy consumed in the lecture building of the Al-Khwarizmi College of Engineering, University of Baghdad (UOB), Baghdad, Iraq. The weather data and the building construction informati
... Show MoreAcademic Entitlement (AE) is the expectation by students to receive high grades or preferential treatment without significant effort. Exploring AE from faculty perspective has not been investigated in Arab colleges of pharmacy. The aim of this study was to explore experiences and perceptions towards student AE among pharmacy faculty in the Arab World. A cross-sectional, self-administered, anonymous, electronic survey was sent to pharmacy faculty across pharmacy colleges in Arab countries. The survey collected demographic data, an AE measure including 17 items reflecting seven AE components, and faculty perceptions and perceived reasons for AE. A total of 345 responses were collected. The AE level wa
Administrative procedures in various organizations produce numerous crucial records and data. These
records and data are also used in other processes like customer relationship management and accounting
operations.It is incredibly challenging to use and extract valuable and meaningful information from these data
and records because they are frequently enormous and continuously growing in size and complexity.Data
mining is the act of sorting through large data sets to find patterns and relationships that might aid in the data
analysis process of resolving business issues. Using data mining techniques, enterprises can forecast future
trends and make better business decisions.The Apriori algorithm has bee
This work, deals with Kumaraswamy distribution. Kumaraswamy (1976, 1978) showed well known probability distribution functions such as the normal, beta and log-normal but in (1980) Kumaraswamy developed a more general probability density function for double bounded random processes, which is known as Kumaraswamy’s distribution. Classical maximum likelihood and Bayes methods estimator are used to estimate the unknown shape parameter (b). Reliability function are obtained using symmetric loss functions by using three types of informative priors two single priors and one double prior. In addition, a comparison is made for the performance of these estimators with respect to the numerical solution which are found using expansion method. The
... Show MoreThe problem of the research is focused on importance limited of Iraq industrial companies in application of scientific measurements of supply chains performance, The research sought to achieve a group of goals, the most important are , identifying the strengths and weaknesses in the reality of supply chain in General Company for Cotton Industries, The data and information required are gathered from the dependence company, records through the field observations and personal interviews, the research used some quantitative indicators to measure of supply chain performance, The research reached to many conclusions , the most outstanding among them is the existence of a strong inverse correlatio
... Show MoreThe study objectives were to (1) describe the characteristics of the pharmacy professionals and (2) explore the association between job satisfaction and factors, such as work control, work stress, workload and organization and professional commitments.
This study was a cross-sectional design. The survey items were mainly adapted from the US National Pharmacist Workforce Survey. An electronic (Qualtrics) questionnaire was posted on pharmacist social media in several A
The analytical study of optical bistability is concerned in a fully
optimized laser Fabry-Perot system. The related phenomena of
switching dynamics and optimization procedure are also included.
From the steady state of optical bistability equation can plot the
incident intensity versus the round trip phase shift (φ) for different
values of dark mistuning
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or finesse (F= 1, 5, 20,
100). In order to obtain different optical bistable loops. The inputoutput
characteristic for a nonlinear Fabry-Perot etalon of a different
values of finesse (F) and using different initial detuning (φ0) are used
in this rese