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.
E-learning seeks to create an interactive learning environment between the teacher and the learner through electronic media conveying in more than one direction, regardless of how the environment and its variables are identified. It also develops skills necessary to deal with technology in order to be able to take into account the individual differences between them and helps e-learning teacher and learner to achieve the goals set in advance and identify educational objectives in a clear manner. The research aims to identify e-learning in its benefits and management systems. It has three sections dealt with in the current research. Chapter II concentrates on the research Methodology, which consisted of three sections: The first s
... Show MoreMethods of teaching plays an important vole in the educational process
because is the link between the teacher and the learner. The process of
teaching doesut fulfill the desirable results unless the methods of guiding and
teaching are provided and through a qualified educationalist capable of
communicating the syllabus to the students in an easy and clear way. In spite
of the diversity of the methods of teaching ,there is no one way suitable for all
the educational purposes , all the sciences ,all the subjects ,all the levels of
growth ,levels of teaching, maturity and intelligences ,all teachers and
educationalists and all the circum stances surrounding the teaching processes
.The teacher is the one who choos
The study aims at knowing the relationship between retirement problems and psychological flexibility, besides identifying the difference of retirement problems and psychological flexibility due to the wok place variable and sex variable.
The study sample consists of 250 registered retirees in both associations of the government and the UNRWA. The researcher had prepared and used a retirement problems scale and a psychological flexibility scale. The study findings show the following:
- The economic problems were greatly common by a relative weight of 76.3 %.
- The psychological compatibility was the most widespread domain in the psychological fl
Allah Almighty has aggrandized the position of orphans and elevated their status in the society and has given the graces for those who sponsor the orphan and care for and protecting them, even those who rub their heads. The divine care is manifested in the verses of the Holy Bible and the Holy Quran. Therefore, the whole world cared for the orphan, and called for the rights of the orphans in the conferences and the channels. But all that was little effort that does not meet what the orphan need and some were only ink on paper that were not applied. All that mentioned above is necessary in dealing with the study (the rights of orphans in the Old Testament and Islam, a Comparative Study). The study was divided into a Preface and four inquirie
... Show MoreA study of the hadiths of supplication orchestration
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 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
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The majority of Arab EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners struggle with speaking English fluency. Iraqi students struggle to speak English confidently due to mispronunciation, grammatical errors, short and long pauses while speaking or feeling confused in normal conversations. Collaborative learning is crucial to enhance student’s speaking skills in the long run. This study aims to state the importance of collaborative learning as a teaching method to EFL learners in the meantime. In this quantitative and qualitative study, specific focus is taken on some of Barros’s views of collaborative learning as a teamwork and some of Pattanpichet’s speaking achievements under four categories: academic benefits, social benefits,
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Social interaction is the platform that enables people to connect and practice language. Active listening stimulates them to understand the language they are speaking. The problem of the study highlights that less attention to listening among speaking, reading, and writing skills causes the weakness of collaborative learning. This paper contributes to characterizing the effectiveness of collaborative learning in developing learner’s listening skills. It aims to underscore the role of target language learners as members of the learning groups and of the teacher in the collaborative learning process. 130 Iraqi EFL teachers from different colleges at the University of Baghdad participated in this study. The scores in the statistical data wer
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