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 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
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Fe, Co and Sb nanopowders were fruitfully prepared by electrical wire explosion method in Double distilled and de-ionized water (DDDW) media. The formation of iron, cobalt and antimony (FeCoSb) alloy nanopowder was monitored by X-ray diffraction. The x-ray diffraction pattern indicates that there are iron, cobalt and antimony peaks. Optical properties of this alloy nanoparticles were characterized by UV-Visible absorption spectra. The absorption peak position is shifted to the lower wavelengths when the current increases. That means the mean size of the nanoparticles controlled by changing the magnitude of the current. The surface morphological analysis is carried out by employing Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Particles with varies
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The characters of facades' form of the Iraqi building after 2003 have been changed, it has been described by many names. The problem of the research is that what are the features of the characters of the form in the façades of the buildings in Baghdad city after 2003? Are the façade of the individual houses or the commercial buildings is the heaviest in the visual weight? The research aims to answer those questions by choosing the vernacular architecture as a measurement tool. It is the informal image of the architecture, which is built by people informally and spontaneously, without official control and legislation to be organized. This is smellier to what has happened in Baghdad, after 2003 according to previous stud
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Dell Hymesin 1964coined The Ethnography of Communication in an attempt to explain the ways in which people use the language to interact. It hypothesizes that ethnography is less applicable among participants who have the same sociocultural background. It was proven that all the basic speech components occur whenever there is an interactional situation. The elements of (SPEAKING) schema are closely connected. However, the findings establish the fact that these elements take place effectively among participants who have the same sociocultural background.One of the most outstanding conclusions is the capability of the (SPEAKING) model to analyze not only an interaction between two or more participants, but also any event which consists of a mo
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Abstract
The study aims to build a training program based on the Connectivism Theory to develop e-learning competencies for Islamic education teachers in the Governorate of Dhofar, as well as to identify its effectiveness. The study sample consisted of (30) Islamic education teachers to implement the training program, they were randomly selected. The study used the descriptive approach to determine the electronic competencies and build the training program, and the quasi-experimental approach to determine the effectiveness of the program. The study tools were the cognitive achievement test and the observation card, which were applied before and after. The study found that the effectiveness of the training program
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