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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The present paper investigates the role of fear and predator dependent refuge in the prey-predator system. The system describes the interaction between prey and a stage structure of predator that incorporates Holling II functional response. The predator splits into two compartments immature (juvenile) and mature (adult). The mature predators can hunt and reproduce but this capability is not found in the immature predators, the immature depend on their parents. The growth rate of prey decreases due to the existence of mature predators. The existence, uniqueness, and boundedness of the solution of the system are investigated. Three equilibrium points of the system are determined. The local stability of the system is studied. The global stabil
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A cumulative review with a systematic approach aimed to provide a comparison of studies’ investigating the possible impact of the active form of vitamin D3, calcitriol (CTL), on the tooth movement caused by orthodontic forces (OTM) by evaluating the quality of evidence, based on collating current data from animal model studies, in vivo cell culture studies, and human clinical trials. Methods: A strict systematic review protocol was applied following the application of the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO). A structured search strategy, including main keywords, was defined during detailed search with the application of electronic database systems: Medline/Pubmed, EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science, and
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The necessary optimality conditions with Lagrange multipliers are studied and derived for a new class that includes the system of Caputo–Katugampola fractional derivatives to the optimal control problems with considering the end time free. The formula for the integral by parts has been proven for the left Caputo–Katugampola fractional derivative that contributes to the finding and deriving the necessary optimality conditions. Also, three special cases are obtained, including the study of the necessary optimality conditions when both the final time and the final state are fixed. According to convexity assumptions prove that necessary optimality conditions are sufficient optimality conditions.
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The standard formulation of Wave Intensity Analysis (WIA) assumes that the flow velocity (U) in the conduit is <;<; the velocity of propagation of waves (c) in the system, and Mach number, M=U/c, is negligible. However, in the large conduit arteries, U is relatively high due to ventricular contraction and c is relatively low due to the large compliance; thus M is > 0, and may not be ignored. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify experimentally the relationship between M and the reflection coefficient in vitro. Combinations of flexible tubes, of 2 m in length with isotropic and uniform circular cross sectional area along their longitudinal axes, were used to present mother and daughter tubes to produce a range of reflection coeffic
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This study aims at suggesting flow as a strategy for training female EFL student-teachers in the teaching training course and finding out the effect of this strategy on their performance and their flow state. The training course syllabuses will be constructed according to the flow nine factors and the teaching skills. The measurement tools are the student-teacher performance checklist that has already been used by the department of English language and SHORT Flow State Scale (S FSS-2). The study population is represented with the (60) female student-teachers/ fourth stage/ evening studies at theEnglish department /college of education for women/the University of Baghdad. The study is used the experimental design in that (30) of the student-
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This study investigates the Linguistic and Conceptual equivalence of Conner’s Revised Scales when applied on a Sudanese sample. Sudanese parents and teachers completed behavior-rating scales on a stratified sample of 200 children. These instruments were based on Conner’s parent -48 and teacher-28 questionnaires. Following a reliable translation into Sudanese Arabic the test-retest reliability of the items and the internal consistency of the original Conner’s' revised scales were explored. The associations between scale scores and between parents and teachers scores were also examined. Both instruments displayed good reliability and the original Conners scales had satisfactory internal consistency. The inter-correlation sugg
... Show MoreLaser is a powerful device that has a wide range of applications in fields ranging from materials science and manufacturing to medicine and fibre optic communications. One remarkable