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A Study of the Problems of Learning and Translating Idioms
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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.

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Publication Date
Sun Jan 01 2023
Journal Name
Aip Conference Proceedings
Recovery of methyl orange from aqueous solutions by bulk liquid membrane process facilitated with anionic carrier
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Dyes are extensively water-soluble and toxic chemicals. The disposing of wastewater rich with such chemicals has severely impacted surface water quality (rivers and lakes). In the current study, an anionic dye, methyl orange, were extracted from wastewater fluids using bulk liquid membranes supplemented with an anionic carrier (Aliquat 336 (QCI)). Parameters including solvent type (carbon tetrachloride and chloroform), membrane stirring speed (100-250 rpm), mixing speed of both phases (50-100 rpm), The feed pH (2-12) and implemented temperature (35-60 °C) were thoroughly analyzed to determine the effect of such variables on extraction effectiveness. Furthermore, the effect of methyl orange (10-50 ppm) in the feed stage and NaOH (0

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Publication Date
Mon Aug 01 2016
Journal Name
Ieee Transactions On Neural Systems And Rehabilitation Engineering
Transradial Amputee Gesture Classification Using an Optimal Number of sEMG Sensors: An Approach Using ICA Clustering
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Publication Date
Wed Oct 22 2025
Journal Name
Journal Of Composites And Biodegradable Polymers
Experimental Behavior of One-Way RC Ultra-Thin Slabs Retrofitted with Post-Installed NSM CFRP Rods
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This study evaluates the flexural behavior of ultra-thin (50 mm) one‑way reinforced‑concrete (RC) slabs retrofitted with near‑surface mounted (NSM) carbon‑fiber‑reinforced polymer (CFRP) rods under quasi‑static loading. T300‑grade CFRP rods (≈4 mm diameter) were bonded in pre‑cut 7 mm × 7 mm grooves using a two‑part epoxy. As a proof-of-concept experimental baseline, three simply‑supported specimens (1000 mm × 500 mm × 50 mm) were tested in a six‑point bending configuration (four applied loads + two reactions): two conventional controls and one strengthened slab. A load‑control rate of ~15 kN/min was applied; the controls were cycled twice and the strengthened slab four times. Relative to the average of

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Publication Date
Fri Jan 01 2016
Journal Name
8th Conference On Power Electronics, Machines And Drives (pemd), Glasgow, Uk
Design of tubular moving magnet linear alternator for use with an external combustion - free piston engine
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Publication Date
Sun Sep 15 2019
Journal Name
Plant Archives
ANTIBACTERIAL ACTIVITY OF CONOCARPUS ERECTUS LEAVES EXTRACTS ON SOME MICROORGANISMS ISOLATED FROM PATIENTS WITH BURN INFECTION
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Medicinal plants are a source for a wide variety of natural active compounds and are used for the treatment of diseases throughout the world. Conocarpus erectus L. widely planted all over Iraq and has different secondary metabolites, which has been used in treatment of anemia, cancer, fever and diarrhea. The present study aims to estimate the antibacterial activity of Conocarpus erectus leaves extracts on some microorganisms collected from patients with burn infection. The study began with the collection of Conocarpus erectus leaves in June 2018 from the trees in university of Baghdad. Maceration method was used to prepare aqueous extract, while Soxhelt apparatus was used to prepare methanolic extract. The results of phytochemical test show

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Publication Date
Tue Sep 01 2020
Journal Name
Baghdad Science Journal
Decolorization of Phenol Red Dye by Immobilized Laccase in Chitosan Beads Using Laccase - Mediator - System Model
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This work describes the enhancement of phenol red decolorization through immobilizing of laccase in chitosan and enzyme recycling. Commercial laccase from white rot fungus, Trametesversicolor (Tvlac), was immobilizedin to freshly prepared chitosan beads by using glutaraldehyde as a cross linker. Characterization of prepared chitosan was confirmed by FTIR and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Tvlac (46.2 U/mL) immobilized into chitosan beads at 0.8 % glutaraldehyde (v/v) within 24 hrs. Synthetic (HBT) and natural (vanillin) mediators were used to enhance dye decolorizoation. It was found that 89 % of phenol red was decolorized by chitosan beads within 180 min. in the absence of enzyme and mediator, while decolorization percenta

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Publication Date
Mon Nov 01 2021
Journal Name
Energy Reports
Global solar radiation prediction over North Dakota using air temperature: Development of novel hybrid intelligence model
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Publication Date
Sat Feb 01 2020
Journal Name
Journal Of Water Process Engineering
Waterworks sludge-filter sand permeable reactive barrier for removal of toxic lead ions from contaminated groundwater
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Publication Date
Sun Apr 01 2012
Journal Name
2012 International Conference On Future Communication Networks
Efficient method to find the multiplicative inverse in GF (2<sup>m</sup>) using FPGA by exponentiation to (2<sup>k</sup>)
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Publication Date
Sun Apr 01 2012
Journal Name
2012 International Conference On Future Communication Networks
Efficient method to find the multiplicative inverse in GF (2<sup>m</sup>) using FPGA by exponentiation to (2<sup>k</sup>)
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Multiplicative inverse in GF (2 m ) is a complex step in some important application such as Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and other applications. It operates by multiplying and squaring operation depending on the number of bits (m) in the field GF (2 m ). In this paper, a fast method is suggested to find inversion in GF (2 m ) using FPGA by reducing the number of multiplication operations in the Fermat's Theorem and transferring the squaring into a fast method to find exponentiation to (2 k ). In the proposed algorithm, the multiplicative inverse in GF(2 m ) is achieved by number of multiplications depending on log 2 (m) and each exponentiation is operates in a single clock cycle by generating a reduction matrix for high power of two ex

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