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 definition of "prostitute" and prostitution is a difficult one and a
question over which the legislators of many lands and nations differed. A
notable feature of prostitution is its epidemic increase at times of war,
revolution and armed commotion, on account of economic, social and
psychological factors generated by such conditions of mortal conflicts. Wars
invariably deprive young wives and lovers of their men folk, resulting in
financial , sexual and emotional frustrations . At no time is the natural
balance between the sexes more seriously disturbed than during wars, when
thousands of men are thrown into one sector of the country and hundreds of
towns and villages are left to women and children only. Lo
Abstract:
Witness the current business environment changes rapidly reflected on the performance of the facility wishing to stay , which is no longer style reaction enough to handle installations with their environment , and quickly began to lose its luster with the emergence of a message and the vision of contemporary business environment from a set of parts interacting with each other and the concept of behavioral includes all dimensions of performance, it is imperative to adopt a system installations influence variables and positive interaction through the development of strategic plans and the use of implementation and follow-up strategies to ensure the effectiveness of the method for meas
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DBN Rashid, International Journal of English Linguistics, 2019 - Cited by 2
Background There is an increasing need for pharmacists to incorporate more patient care targeting. Consequently, the productivity of pharmacy programs can be enhanced by evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of pharmacy curriculum. Objectives To assess the beliefs, perceptions, and challenges of the College of Pharmacy –The University of Baghdad PharmD graduates regarding the PharmD program. Method Qualitative research methodology was implemented. Graduate PharmD candidates were interviewed either inperson or via telephone. The interviews were conducted in a semi-structured format, utilizing a predetermined interview guide that included open-ended questions. Thematic analysis was implemented to analyze the data. Results A total of 2
... Show MorePop corn forms appetizer wide use by different age groups in many occasions, especially the children of school age, so we went towards the study of its chemical composition ;determination the amount of calories processed; and its content of some essential amino acids and essential vitamins. Therefore we selected six samples of popcorn fromfive different areas belonging to Salah al- din province which are displayed in the local markets and prepared at the traditional way by the vendors by a preparation machines of popcorn.The results showed that the humidity content range was 12.0-13.8%, protein 7.6 - 10.1%, while each of fat and ash giving percentages ranged from 3.8 - 4.2% and 3.1 4.2%, respectively, carbohydrates were ranged from
... Show MoreIn order to advance the education process and raise the educational level of the players, it became necessary to introduce new educational aids, programmed education in the education process, through which the basic skills to be learned are explained and clarified, and immediate feedback is provided that would enhance the information of the learner, and Reaching the goal to be achieved, taking into account the individual differences between the players, and thus it is possible to move away from the educational methods used in learning skills, which requires great effort and time, in addition to that the open playground may not perform the skill accurately and the player looks from one side, while when using the computer you look from severa
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This research paper studies the alienation of the intellectuals in the modern novel through the study of two alienated characters, John Marcher in Henry James's The Beast in the Jungle, and Mr. Duffy in James's Joyce's "A Painful Case." As a result of the complexity of life in the industrial societies, the individuals, especially the intellectual ones, feel themselves unable to integrate into social life; they fear society and feel that it endangers their individuality and independence. Thus, these characters live on the fringe of the societ
... Show MoreProducts’ quality inspection is an important stage in every production route, in which the quality of the produced goods is estimated and compared with the desired specifications. With traditional inspection, the process rely on manual methods that generates various costs and large time consumption. On the contrary, today’s inspection systems that use modern techniques like computer vision, are more accurate and efficient. However, the amount of work needed to build a computer vision system based on classic techniques is relatively large, due to the issue of manually selecting and extracting features from digital images, which also produces labor costs for the system engineers.
 
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Products’ quality inspection is an important stage in every production route, in which the quality of the produced goods is estimated and compared with the desired specifications. With traditional inspection, the process rely on manual methods that generates various costs and large time consumption. On the contrary, today’s inspection systems that use modern techniques like computer vision, are more accurate and efficient. However, the amount of work needed to build a computer vision system based on classic techniques is relatively large, due to the issue of manually selecting and extracting features from digital images, which also produces labor costs for the system engineers. In this research, we pr
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