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.
Abstract
The current research problem includes a variety of research motivations to serve the private health sector, which is witnessing a great competition from internal and external environments. In this regard, private medical clinics are increasingly seeking to attract and retain customers through the quality of their service offerings represented by health services. Innovative and effective marketing methods to improve performance and stay in competition, by relying on the physical evidence of the product as a component of the marketing mix of services and its role in particular in packaging and supporting the health service with concrete evidence that affects the customer an
... Show MoreThe aim of the research is to identify both the re-engineering of management processes and the strategic decision-making process in the research community and determine the nature of the correlation between the two variables and know the relationship between them to achieve the research goal. The researcher used a descriptive and analytical method. The research community consists of a group of professors and staff of the College of Education affiliated to the University of Mustansiriya in Baghdad, which their number were (45), the researcher has distributed the forms to all members of the sample, only (3) forms were excluded for invalidity and thus the number of forms approved in the analysis were (42) forms. The rese
... Show MoreThe research Aim is to provide support to small enterprises by providing tools that enable measurement and test their performance and identifying weaknesses and work on them is determined by the problem of searching using traditional assessment methods for small projects with only financial performance measurement standards that do not provide a complete picture of the performance of these projects so use the balanced scorecard the four pillars (financial, customer, learning and growth, and internal processes) and identify deviations and work on them through the use of the outputs of the programme (probe), PROmoting Business Excellence-PROBE), which It is a model of performance evaluation, with which you can deve
... Show MoreThe high mobility group A1 gene (HMGA1) rs139876191 variant has been related to metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes, but data are lacking in Middle Eastern populations. The study aimed to assess whether the HMGA1 rs139876191 variant is associated with metabolic syndrome risk and whether this variant predicts the risk of insulin resistance. This case-control study was carried out at single center in Kirkuk city/ Iraq from February to August 2022. Polymorphisms in HMGA1 and genotyping were identified by Sanger sequencing of genomic DNA obtained from 91 Iraqi participants (61 patients with metabolic syndrome and 30 control). Lipid profile, serum (glucose and insulin), glycated hemoglobin, blood pressure, body mass index, and waist circumfer
... Show MoreThis research aims to clarify the role of Information Technology Competency (ITC) with dimensions' (IT Usage, IT Knowledge, and IT Operations) as an independent variable in the activation of Human Resources Management Practices (HRM Practices) as a dependent variable with dimensions' (Training and Development, Recruitment, Job Design, and Performance appraisal). Based on this, the correlation and effect relationships between the independent and dependent variables are determined by formulating two main hypotheses. There are a significant relationship and effect of IT competency with HRM practices within the dimensions. Furthermore, the scope and population of this research are the Informatics and Communications P
... Show MoreIn "historical" fiction, characters that never really existed, give expression to the impact of historical events on the people who really did live through them. The result is not history, as an accurate record of actual events, but fiction in which an earlier age is rendered through the personal joys and sufferings of characters. This paper
aims at investigating the historical realities presented in Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.
The idea of a homomorphism of a cubic set of a KU-semigroup is studied and the concept of the product between two cubic sets is defined. And then, a new cubic bipolar fuzzy set in this structure is discussed, and some important results are achieved. Also, the product of cubic subsets is discussed and some theorems are proved.
Silver sulfide and the thin films Ag2Se0.8Te0.2 and Ag2Se0.8S0.2 created by the thermal evaporation process on glass with a thickness of 350 nm were examined for their structural and optical properties. These films were made at a temperature of 300 K. According to the X-ray diffraction investigation, the films are polycrystalline and have an initial orthorhombic phase. Using X-ray diffraction research, the crystallization orientations of Ag2Se and Ag2Se0.8Te0.2 & Ag2Se0.8S0.2 (23.304, 49.91) were discovered (XRD). As (Ag2Se and Ag2Se0.8Te0.2 & Ag2Se0.8S0.2) absorption coefficient fell from (470-774) nm, the optical band gap increased (2.15 & 2 & 2.25eV). For instance, the characteristics of thin films made of Ag2Se0.8Te0.2 and Ag2Se0.8S0.2
... Show MorePreparation and Identification of some new Pyrazolopyrin derivatives and their Polymerizations study