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 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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This study investigates the challenges encountered by first-grade intermediate students in learning the Arabic language. It aims to identify specific obstacles that hinder language acquisition and proficiency among this demographic. Through qualitative and quantitative methods, including surveys and interviews with students, teachers, and parents, the research highlights key issues such as limited vocabulary, difficulties in grammar, lack of engagement with the material, and inadequate teaching resources. The findings reveal a complex interplay between cognitive, social, and educational factors that contribute to these challenges. The study underscores the need for targeted interventions, such as enhanced pedagogical strategies and improved
... Show MoreVictorian age is known as a time of perpetual change. It is a time of new industrialization, increased urbanization and new technology. Therefore, one of the strongest undercurrents of this is the position of women. Woman at that time was viewed as “an angel in the house” especially this who belongs to the upper-middle class. She is described in such term because she spends much time in her domestic domain. Therefore, she should be passive, obedient and dependent. Despite the Victorian society contains several classes; women are defined under two labels: the angel and the demon or the whore. The angel woman can be any woman from the lower middle class to the aristocracy, while the whore refers to any working class woman. The differen
... Show MoreIn this paper, an approximate solution of nonlinear two points boundary variational problem is presented. Boubaker polynomials have been utilized to reduce these problems into quadratic programming problem. The convergence of this polynomial has been verified; also different numerical examples were given to show the applicability and validity of this method.
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The study aims to identify the effects of dubbed Turkish drama on the public through the application of a sample of the views of women. The study also attempts to monitor the causes and motives due to the act of observation and to identify the various effects of this act. In order to achieve these goals, the researcher relies on the descriptive approach in addition to the questionnaire and interviews to collect data. It ends with a number of results such as: The study aims to identify the effects of dubbed Turkish drama on the public through the application of a sample of the views of women. The study also attempts to monitor the causes and motives due to the act of observation and to identify the various effects of this act. In ord
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The aim of the present research is to identify the test wisdom and the engagement with learning and psychological tension among postgraduate students at the University of Samarra according to the variables of the department, gender, age, and whether students are employee or non-employee. The study also attempts to identify the relationship between the test wisdom and the engagement with learning and psychological tension. The research sample consisted of (75) postgraduate students randomly selected from college of Education. The researcher applied the test–wisdom of (Mellman & Ebel) and the scale of engagement with learning preparation by (Al-zaabi 2013). In addition, the researcher used the list of the psychological stress of (Abu
... Show MoreHysterectomy is one of the most common gynecological operations done worldwide. Early diagnosis of the psychosexual effects of a hysterectomy and the fast application of appropriate treatment can prevent further worsening and persistence of symptoms, especially with respect to higher levels of anxiety, depression, lower self-esteem, and sexual impact after a hysterectomy. The aim of this study was to assess the psychological and sexual problems of women with hysterectomy. A descriptive study was carried out from March 1, 2023 to May 25, 2023 to determine the level of psychosexual problems experienced by women after hysterectomy. A purposive (non-probability) sample of 120 women who visited the outpatient clinic at Baghdad Teaching H
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In the past two decades, maritime transport traffic has increased, especially in the case of container flow. The BAP (Berth Allocation Problem) (BAP) is a main problem to optimize the port terminals. The current manuscript explains the DBAP problems in a typical arrangement that varies from the conventional separate design station, where each berth can simultaneously accommodate several ships when their entire length is less or equal to length. Be a pier, serve. This problem was then solved by crossing the Red Colobuses Monkey Optimization (RCM) with the Genetic Algorithm (GA). In conclusion, the comparison and the computational experiments are approached to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method contrasted with other
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During COVID-19, wearing a mask was globally mandated in various workplaces, departments, and offices. New deep learning convolutional neural network (CNN) based classifications were proposed to increase the validation accuracy of face mask detection. This work introduces a face mask model that is able to recognize whether a person is wearing mask or not. The proposed model has two stages to detect and recognize the face mask; at the first stage, the Haar cascade detector is used to detect the face, while at the second stage, the proposed CNN model is used as a classification model that is built from scratch. The experiment was applied on masked faces (MAFA) dataset with images of 160x160 pixels size and RGB color. The model achieve
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