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 research aims to shed light on the recent experience in the Iraqi business environment, which is the experience of the merger. To evaluate a recent experience in an important sector of the Iraqi business sectors, namely the industrial sector to enable decision-makers to review that experience to judge the extent of its success and address some of the lapses that experience that by measuring synergies can be judged on the success of the merger experience or not. The research community is the governmental industrial sector. The research sample included six cases of merger (14) companies before the merger. The Holt method was used to predict the net sales and total cost values before the merger as if it were not merged. Th
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the student of the structure of the city and its constituent elements will clearly sense the invisible relationships that underlie the different forms of urban activity, which in turn are defined by the generality of the urban patterns in that city, which will vary clearly according to the location in the city. These relations will be embodied in their true form in the interactions between the different uses of the earth, and the change that will result from their regularity in the form of entities in independent groups, which may share with each other a component of it.
Therefore, the process of controlling the functional interactions between the uses of the urban land and the awareness of t
Background: The repair of bone defects remains a major clinical orthopaedic challenge. Bone is a highly vascularised tissue reliant on the close spatial and temporal connection between blood vessels and bone cells to maintain skeletal integrity. Angiogenesis thus plays a pivotal role in skeletal development and bone fracture repair. The role of angiogenic and osteogenic factors in the adaptive response and interaction of osteoblasts and endothelial cells during the multi step process of bone development and repair will be highlighted in this study. This study aimed to identify the role of local exogenous vascular endothelial growth factor in bone healing and to analyze the expression of VEGF by immunohistochemistry in created bone defect af
... Show MoreSince the invention of the automobile, no aspect of American life, including crime and its control, has remained untouched by this far-reaching innovation in transportation. Vehicular "hot pursuit"-when suspects in motor vehicles use excessive speed in attempting to elude the police. Unfortunately, accounts of wild chases across crowded inner city streets, through tree-lined suburban boulevards, and over remote country roads are very real and not merely fictional material created for entertaining television and motion picture audiences. The specter of "hot pursuit," complete with screaming sirens and red or blue flashing lights, has become a recurring fact of modem life.1 So, too, are the mishaps involving police vehicles or the vehicles pu
... Show MoreThe current world is observing huge developments in presenting the opportunity for organizations and administrative units to use information and communication technology and their adoption by administrative work due to its importance in the achievement of work with higher efficiency, speed, and facility of communication with all individuals and companies using various means of communication Depending on the Internet networks. Therefore, the research dealt with the study of electronic systems designed and adopted in the creation or construction of a database for archiving data, which is the main method in organizations and administrative units in developed countries. Where this system works to convert documents, and manual processes and t
... Show MoreThe research deals with the interchange of the sign transformed from the universal to the local in the theatrical show through the direction processing in the production of a communicative artistic discourse and message, thus making the process of reading the speech and recognizing it by taking into account the cultural differences, customs and local rituals of each country, region, or area. The problem of the research was focused on answering the following question: What are the requirements for the sign in terms of its transformation between the universality and locality in the read-out?
The importance of research is to determine the requiremen
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The phenomenon of negative behavior has studied as a social and psychological phenomenon that effect on the performance and life of workers inside and outside the organization. The adoption of this phenomenon is studied in terms of the role of the internal environment of the organization in addressing this behavior, being the variables belong to the field of organizational behavior to see the results of those variables on the Iraqi organizations, since the specificities of it differ from the rest of the Arab and foreign environments. Therefore, this study focused on testing the relationship of the internal environment of the organization and its role in addressing the negative behavior of the workers.
thi
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Study showed structure of pecten oculi in the Kestrel Falco tinnunculus L.was
Pleated type and consisted of 17 folds which were thick. While in the Collared Dove
Streptopelia decaocto F. was Vaned type and consisted of 13 folds and it described
thin. The illustrated histological study of pecten oculi folds in the Kestrel and the
Collared Dove was composed of large number of capillaries, large blood vessels and
pigment cells which were few in Kestrel compare with the Collared Dove. The bridge
in the Kestrel and the Collared Dove pecten oculi was consisted of connective tissue,
many pigment cells, and contains on little capillaries and it linked the membrane to
the internal limiting membrane of the retina in the Kes
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