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.
An idiom is a group of words whose meaning put together is different from the meaning of
individual words. English is a rich language when it comes to idioms, they represent variety. For
foreign learners, idioms are problematic because even if they know the meaning of individual
words that compose an idiom the meaning of it might be something completely different.
The present study investigates Iraqi third year college students’ recognition of idioms. To
achieve this, the researchers have conducted a test which comprises three questions. Certain
conclusions are reached here along with some suggestions and recommendations.
Literature historians and researchers almost agree that literature is a product of the environment and it is the product of interaction of events and it affected by the direction of that environment and then the literature affects the its environment and the modern science confirms this fact until make the environment competes hereditary factor in its effect because that each environment has its characteristics which affect the literature and leaves its effect on it and even when a writer exaggerate in its monopolize and tyranny of selfin its literature, he cannot be away from affection by including around of literature because the literature is the mirror that reflects aspects of the environment. In other words, literature is expression
... Show MoreThis research endeavors to clarify the relationship between the general policies of the country and Civil Organizations (Cos). This requires that we first identify the concepts of making polices on the one hand, and of COs on the other hand. Initially, polices starts as personal ideas that are, later, turned by some groups of people into suggestions. When the governments adopt these suggestions, they become state policies as shown by the following: Idea ----------> Suggestion--------> Policy. COs are groups of free voluntary organizations acting to bridge the gap between the state and the public, and to respond to the latter's demands. The organizations includes, among others, trade unions and professional associations. In oth
... Show MoreDBN Rashid, IMPAT: International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts, and Literature, 2016 - Cited by 5
The power of advertising is immense. Producers of commercial goods and services routinely pour vast sums into promoting their wares through the advertising media, knowing that a successful campaign can win them vital market share , and that failure to advertise effectively can have devastating results . The function of advertising is promotional ; to draw our attention. In order to achieve this function it must reach its target audience , then capture that audience with a message that is both attractive and memorable.
From a linguistic point of view, the language of advertising must be informative, instructive , distinctive and persuasive . It must employ&nb
... Show MoreThe present theoretical study concerning the relation between anthropology and education has discovered the existence of differences in points of view between teachers related to socialization. Anthropologists see socialization as the process in the child acquires the culture of society tike shills, habits, types of behaviors, norms and social values. Sociologists concentrate on the problems of learning, and the types of social behaviors. Social sciences can be considered as integrated unity concerning the realization of objectives. However they hold various opinions about this subject.
Informativity, being an essential component of text/discourse, plays a significant role in highlighting the intended meaning and finally contributes to the overall process of rendering a text cross-culturally. It has, however, been overlooked by translators in doing their jobs. In poetic translation, informativity plays a particularly significant role as it sheds light on the ungraspable traits of meaning.
This study tries to explore this aspect in a translation of Emily Dickenson's Slant of Lights to see where the translator fell short in this aspect with attempts to produce an alternative translation taking into consideration the various orders of informativity. For this purpose, a model of informativity is forwarded t
... Show MoreThe current study aims to examine the level of problems faced by university students in distance learning, in addition to identify the differences in these problems in terms of the availability of internet services, gender, college, GPA, interactions, academic cohort, and family economic status. The study sample consisted of (3172) students (57.3% females). The researchers developed a questionnaire with (32) items to measure distance learning problems in four areas: Psychological (9 items), academic (10 items), technological (7 items), and study environment (6 items). The responses are scored on a (5) point Likert Scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Means, standard deviations, and Multivariate Analysis of Vari
... Show MoreLearning Disabilities are described as a hidden and puzzling disability. Children with these difficulties have the potential to hide weaknesses in their performance because they are a homogenous group of disorders that consist of obvious difficulties in acquiring and using reading, writing, Mathematical inference. Thus, the research aims to identify the disabilities of academic learning in (reading, writing, mathematics), identify the problems of behavior (general, motor, social). Identify the relationship among behaviour problems. The research also aims to identify the counseling needs to reduce the behavioral problems. The researcher adopted the analytical descriptive method by preparing two main tools for measuring learning disabiliti
... Show MoreThe research addresses a pattern of imagery which is regarded a Prominent feature of Abi Tamaam's Poetry (the image of implicit simile) which is based on the hidden signified and the signifier which can be deduced out of context . The investigation requires a study whose proof is based on imagery which is of three types: natural proof , human proof and Quran proof . After handling the realistic structures of this image, the researcher has shifted attention to its types and has dealt with the psychological domain , dividing it in two types: the sensory image and the mental image. The research is directed towards studying the implicit sentence regarding its styles of expression : declarative expression and composition expression . The
... Show More