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 study aims to identify the psychological, social, and academic problems that encounter students at the college of education. To this end, the researcher utilized the descriptive approach, where a questionnaire was used as a tool to collect the study data. The findings of study revealed that the main academic problems are inability to understand what the students read, lack of concentration over the process of studying. The Difficulty of preparation for test. Lack of ability to memorize quickly. As for the prominent social problems: the excessive usage of social media that drove students away from their main tasks, the Lack of participation in social activities, the scarcity the religious information. The psychological problems includ
... Show MoreThat beliefs of self-efficacy is a dimension of personal, means the ability to overcome the tasks and challenging problems facing the individual, it is paying the person for the selection of requirements and decisions on strategies to overcome the problems, as well as affect the efforts and the extent of material consumption and summarized the research problem in the study of subject important is the beliefs of self-sufficiency that are related to the behavior of students and their problems and their ability to solve them. The research aims to build a measure of the beliefs of competence, and measured then you know the differences between males and females. applied the yardstick by which the researcher built on a sample of (300) students
... Show Moreobjective : To assess for Psychological Problems. The study was carried out from 1st of December 2004 to 15th
March, 2005.
Mythology : A descriptive comparative study was conducted for elder in the geriatric home and the community;
A questionnaire was constructed to achieve the purposes of the study; it includes two parts dealing with the
elder demographic characteristics and psychological problems.
A purposive (no probability) sampling of (100) elderly include (50) elderly from the Geriatric Home and (50)
elderly from the community.
Data were collected and analyzed through a descriptive statistical approach (frequency, percentage, mean and
mean of scores, Standard deviation, Relative Sufficiency).
Result : the
Constitute the relationship between the director and actor mainstay chock done to show art in film and television , both of which occupy what a big role in the mission accomplishment . The leadership of the director of the artwork in various joints require two features two important ( creativity and administration ) , The capabilities director of creative serves as an added intellectual and aesthetic saturated sensation that leaves its impact on all the technical elements involved in done. Either trait administration and leadership it is what requires multiple skills in dealing on according to technical standards and moral and humanitarian allow the transfer of ideas , concepts and visions to those elements to embody and implement the ki
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The research is an attempt to investigate experimentally the influence of teacher’s errors correction and students’ errors correction on teaching English at the College of Physical Education for Women. Errors are seen as a natural way for developing any language but teachers are puzzled the way they can correct these errors. So, this research gives some idea of using two types of errors correction. The sample of the research is female students of the first year stage at the College of Physical Education for Women of the academic year 2009-2010. The whole population of the research is (94) students while the sample is (64). Thus, the sample represents 68% from the population of the research. The sample represents It is hypothesized th
... Show MoreThe study aimed to prepare a measure of metacognitive thinking commensurate with learning the skill, preparing educational units using the Claus Meyer model for metacognitive thinking, and learning the skill of defending the court in volleyball. To identify the effect of educational units using the model (and Claus Meyer) for metacognitive thinking and learning the skill of defending the court in volleyball. The two researchers used the experimental approach with the design of the experimental and control groups.The research community consisted of students of the second stage / College of Physical Education and Sports Sciences / University of Baghdad for the academic year 2021-2022, whose number is (385) st
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