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 study, polymeric coating was developed by incorporating nano graphene in the polymer blend with applications to oil storage tanks. The oil storage tanks samples were brought from the oil Pipeline Company / Doura refinery in Baghdad. The coating polymer was formed with a blend (epoxy resin and repcoat ZR). The proportion of mixing the mixture was 3:1:1 epoxy resin 21.06 gm: repcoat ZR 10.53 gm: hardener 10.53 gm. The blend/graphene was prepared using in stui-polymerization method with different weight percentage 1, 3, 5, and 7 wt % added to blend. The resulting solution was put in a glass tube on a magnetic stirrer for one hour at a temperature of 40 °C. The result of contact angle and wate
... Show MoreUrinary tract infection is a bacterial infection that often affects the bladder and thus the urinary system. E. coli is one of the leading uropathogenic bacteria that cause urinary tract infections. Uropathogenic E. coli is highly effective and successful in causing urinary tract infections through biofilm formation and urothelial cell invasion mechanisms. Other organisms that cause urinary tract infections include members of the Enterobacteriaceae family, streptococci and staphylococci species and perch. In addition, K.penumoniae is another important gram-negative bacterium that causes urinary tract infections. With the PCR technique, unseen bacterial species can be detected using standard clinical microbiology methods. In this study, the
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The research seeks to shed light on green accounting information systems, analyze them, identify sustainability reporting and how to improve it, as well as study the importance of the Iraqi oil sector, analyze it, and work on applying green accounting information systems in order to improve the quality of sustainability reporting. Oil as a branch of the General Corporation for the Distribution of Oil and Gas Products to apply the practical aspect and prove the hypothesis of the research. Explaining the company's role in improving environmental conditions
The research aimed to achieve many objectives represented in two variables, which are the impacted factors and the aggregate planning alternatives of workforce in Educational Al- yarmouk Hospital , This research started from a problem focused on finding solutions to the demand’s fluctuation or the energy limitation while the study importance is emerged from diagnosis the suitable strategy and adopt the suitable alternatives due to their importance in meeting the demand for the health service submitted by the hospital .This study based on choosing assumptions of connection relationship and the impact among the mentioned variables in the(surgery and internal diseases) departments. The research is dependent on ch
... Show MoreSultan Said bin Sultan bin Ahmed bin Said Al-Busaidi (1223-1273 AH / 1806-1856 AD) was able to rule Oman and Zanzibar in a unified Arab-African state during his reign. However, it was separated for several reasons. Thus, the study aims to clarify the efforts made by Sultan Said for annexing Zanzibar to Oman, establishing the Arab-African Sultanate, and shedding light on the role played by Britain in dividing the Arab-African Sultanate and separating Zanzibar from the Omani rule in (1275 AH-1861 AD). The study has adopted the historical descriptive analytical approach. The study has reached several conclusions, such as: The economic motivators were the most important factors that pushed Sultan Said to move his capital from Muscat to
... Show MoreThe peculiarity of worship spaces in the Islamic architecture is evident by its symbolic connotations with doctrinal connections, thus the niche has a major status in that symbolic connotation, which transformed due to the cultural interaction from a rock on the wall directed towards Mecca into an element of integrated structural entity with performative and aesthetic characteristics. The spread of the Islamic religion contributed to subjecting it to a design acculturation process, thus the problem of the research was raised by the following question: has the evolutionary tendency of acculturation been able to effect a major transformation in the niche design? The research aims at identifying the design acculturation and its translation
... Show MoreThe current research deals with the argument of delusion and interpretation in the direction structure and its reflected impact in the reception activity and the amount of conceptual displacement it is subjected to in an aesthetic approach to abstract conceptual definitions of the reception activity , by the effect of this dialectic in the direction structure, which can be summed up by the following question: (What are the characteristics of the direction structure of the imaginary and what is the argument of interpretation in the theatre reception activity?) in order to stand on the aesthetic framework and conceptual definition of the direction structure in the controversy of interpretation and imagination, and its impact on the concept
... Show MorePseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen responsible for serious infections. At least three different exopolysaccharides, alginate, polysaccharide synthesis locus (Psl), and pellicle exopolysaccharide (Pel) make up the biofilm matrix in P. aeruginosa . The effect of temperature on the biofilm formation and gene expression was examined by microtiter plate and real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). To be able to determine the effect of temperature on biofilm formation and gene expression of P. aeruginosa, 303 clinical and environmental samples were collected. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was isolated from 61 (20.1%) and 48 (15.8%) of the clinical and e
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