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 present research aims to identify the social responsibility of the kindergarten teachers of the civil and governmental schools (comparative study)? For the purpose of achieving the objectives of the research, the following formulas were formulated:
- Are there statistically significant differences at the level of (0.05) among the kindergarten teachers in the social responsibility scale?
The current research was limited to kindergarten teachers (governmental and non-governmental) in the Directorate General of Education Baghdad Rusafa / Second.
The main research sample consisted of (100) teachers, (50) teachers from government kindergartens and (50) female kindergarten teache
... Show MoreThe study is concerned with the problem of the earthly identity of kindergarten children by verifying its aims in identifying the earthly identity of the first level of kindergarten children and the earthly identity of both levels of the kindergarten. The research also aims to identify the earthly identity of male and female kindergarten children. The study population is represented in public and private kindergartens on both sides of Baghdad city, Karkh & Rusafa for the academic year (2022-2023). The earthly identity test in its final form consisted of (10) items. The test was administered to a sample of (400) children in public and private kindergartens, who were selected randomly. The results showed that kindergarten children have
... Show MoreAbstractThis study aimed to demonstrate the impact of human development on economic growth in Jordan during the period (1980-2014), Where some diagnoses tests were applied, the results of these tests concluded that the standard models used in the study were free of statistical problems, and hence ordinary least squares (OLS) standard has been used as a tool for analysis to get efficient and unbiased estimates to parameters according to the theory of Gauss Markov.
The results showed that there is a strong and positive impact of human development represented by the Human Development Index (HDI) on economic growth in Jordan represented by the average of real productivity of the Jordanian worker (
... Show MoreKE Sharquie, HA Hassan, AA Noaimi, IRAQI JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY MEDICINE, 2010
Sage (Salvia officinalis), belong to Labiatae family is indigenous to Iraq and other Mediterranean areas but now cultivated world- wide, principally for its use as culinary herb. In the present study preliminary screening for the important phytochemical natural product groups indicated the presence of flavonoid, saponin, hyrolysable and condensed tannin groups. The antibacterial activity of two concentrations 10 mg/ml and 100 mg/ml of chloroform and hydroalcoholic extracts from Salvia officinalis leaves was evaluated against four strains of gram negative bacteria (Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas arigenossa, Klebsiella pneumonia, and Proteus spp) and two str
... Show MoreAlthough the number of implants has increased gradually and consistently over the years to around one million per year globally, there is still far more potential for advancement in the field of dental implantology which is typically growing quickly. This study investigates the effect of nanofiller reinforcement high-performance polymer matrix to enhance mechanical and physical characteristics. Calcium silicate (CS)/Polyetherketoneketone (PEKK) biomedical composite (G0 as a control group) is reinforced with different weight percentages (G1-G4) of tellurium dioxide nanoparticles (TeO2NPs) ( n = 5). This research uses ethanol as a binder for mixing various weight percentages (wt%) of TeO2NPs w
... Show MoreDiscotic liquid crystal compounds were synthesized and characterized. Liquid crystalline texture of these compounds was investigated by polarized optical microscopy (POM). The Hartree-Fock approximation (HF) was used to calculate theoretical molecular parameters for synthesized compounds such as optimization, hardness, EHOMO, ELUMO, and energy gap using the Gaussian 09W program.