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.
In this research, hand lay- up technique is used to prepare samples from epoxy resin reinforced with multi- walled carbon nanotubes in different weight fractions (0, 2, 3, 4, 5) wt%. The immersion effect by sodium hydroxide solution (NaOH) at normality (0.3N) for a period of (15 days) on the thermal conductivity of nanocomposites was studied, and compared to natural condition (before immersion). The thermal conductivity of epoxy nanocomposites specimens were carried out using Lee’s disk method. The experimental results showed that thermal conductivity increased with increase weight fraction before and after immersion for all specimens, while the immersion effect leads to decrease thermal conductive values compared to thermal conductivi
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The present work describes the adsorption of Ba2+ and Mg2+ions from aqueous solutions by activated alumina in single and binary system using batch adsorption. The effect of different parameters such as amount of alumina, concentration of metal ions, pH of solution, contact time and agitation speed on the adsorption process was studied. The optimum adsorbent dosage was found to be 0.5 g and 1.5 g for removal of Ba2+ and Mg2+, respectively. The optimum pH, contact time and agitation speed, were found to be pH 6, 2h and 300 rpm, respectively, for removal of both metal ions. The equilibrium data were analyzed by Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models and the data fitted well to both isotherm modes as indicated by higher correlation of deter
... Show MoreThis study was conducted to determine the effects of concentration of hydrochloric acids, temperature, and time on the hydrolysis of soya proteins (defatted soya flour) by determining the value of total protein nitrogen concentration, and amino nitrogen concentration of protein, peptides, and amino acids, and then calculated the hydrolysis rate of proteins.
The variables of the conditions of hydrolysis process was achieved in this study with the following range value of tests parameter:
- Concentration of HCl solution ranged between 1-7 N,
- Hydrolysis temperature ranged between 35-95 °C, and
- The time of hydroly
The marketing logistic chain, as an integrated system aimed to balance the achievement of its main opposite objectives which represented in the access to the best service presented to the customer with lowest possible logistic costs especially the transportation costs, where encourages the researcher to choose the second objective as a field of this study in order to reduce the transportation costs in the final link of marketing logistic chain which related to delivering of fuel oil to the customer that falls within organizational responsibilities of the company under consideration (Oil Marketing Company) and also known in a brief name by (SOMO) through two methods, the first is by functioning quantative techniques by using trans
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The study of the future of the international system currently appears, according to scientific data and existing facts in light of the emergence of international actors from non-states and international informal institutions, to be heading towards a non-polarity system and this trend is fueled by many variables to reduce polarity, and it is expected in the future that the international system will turn into a non-polarity.
The aim of this research is to introduce agricultural insurance, to define financing in the form of salam and the role of agricultural insurance in the prevention of risks to agricultural finance operations in the form of salam by verifying the hypotheses through which to reach the results, including the imposition of risks for agricultural finance in the form of salam, The study of agricultural finance in the form of salm, the deductive approach to the development of the problem of research and hypotheses, and the inductive method to extrapolate the results through analysis and brother The researcher concluded that agricultural insurance works to bridge the risks facing agricultural finance in the form of the ladder in cases of
... Show MoreThe intelligent buildings provided various incentives to get highly inefficient energy-saving caused by the non-stationary building environments. In the presence of such dynamic excitation with higher levels of nonlinearity and coupling effect of temperature and humidity, the HVAC system transitions from underdamped to overdamped indoor conditions. This led to the promotion of highly inefficient energy use and fluctuating indoor thermal comfort. To address these concerns, this study develops a novel framework based on deep clustering of lagrangian trajectories for multi-task learning (DCLTML) and adding a pre-cooling coil in the air handling unit (AHU) to alleviate a coupling issue. The proposed DCLTML exhibits great overall control and is
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