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, the chamomile flowers (Matricaria recutitaL) which grow in Iraqi Kurdistan region during the seasons of (2008) are collected. The percentage of essential oil was determined by using steam distillation and the extraction of flowers performed with petroleum ether (70-80) ºC and methanol 70% using ultrasonic extraction. Total phenolic compounds were determined from methanol extracts by using Folin-Ciocalteu method. The extracts were evaluated by thin layer chromatography, ultraviolet absorption and the biological activities were evaluated through their antibacterial action against two types of bacteria using hole method. The flowers showed a composition of 0.071% ash, 0.4% essential oil, 3.2% non oily compounds, 4% oil, 1.9% mo
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There have been many advances in the solar chimney power plant since 1930 and the first pilot work was built in Spain (Manzanares) that produced 50 KW. The solar chimney power plant is considered of a clean power generation that needs to be investigated to enhance the performance by studying the effect of changing the area of passage of air to enhance the velocity towards the chimney to maximize design velocity. In this experimental and numerical study, the reduction area of solar collector was investigated. The reduction area that mean changing the height of glass cover from the absorbing plate (h1=3.8cm, h2=2.6cm and h3=1.28cm). The numerical study was performed using ANSYS Fluent software package (version 14.0) to solve go
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The present project involves photodegrading the dye solochrom violet under advanced oxidation techniques at (25 oC) temperature and UV light. Zinc Oxide (ZnO) and UV radiation at a wavelength of 580 nm were used to conduct the photocatalytic reaction of the solochrom violet dye. One of the factors looked into was the impact of the starting conditions. pH, the amount of original hydrogen peroxide, and the dye concentration time radiation were used. For hours, the kinetics and percentages of degradation were examined at various intervals. In general, it has been discovered that the photodegradation rates of the dye were greater when H2O2 and ZnO were combined with UV light. The best wavelength to use was determined. Modern oxidation techni
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(Sb2S3)1-xSnx thin films with different concentrations (0, 0.05 and
0.15) and thicknesses (300,500 and 700nm) have been deposited by
single source vacuum thermal evaporation onto glass substrates at
ambient temperature to study the effect of tin content, thickness and
on its structural morphology, and electrical properties. AFM study
revealed that microstructure parameters such as crystallite size, and
roughness found to depend upon deposition conditions. The DC
conductivity of the vacuum evaporated (Sb2S3)1-x Snx thin films was
measured in the temperature range (293-473)K and was found to
increase on order of magnitude with
The present study was designed to investigate the normal histological features of the stomach at the prenatal stage from ten healthy pregnant rabbits at the third period of pregnancy. The stomach appeared as J-shaped situated at the left part of the abdominal cavity. It found in the front part entirely within the rib. The non-glandular region act as a reservoir, the septa prevented ingesta reflux into the esophagus. Histologically the stomach in both periods composed of four tunics', which were mucosa, tunica submucosa, tunica muscularis and tunica serosa. The stomach also has different regions cardiac, fundic and pyloric regions, glands in the cardiac region were coiled branched tubular gland and almost present of the mucous cells
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The anatomical features of Agave americana L. leaf have been described, transverse sections of the leaf have been examined, the epidermis is single-layered on both surfaces, the stomata are sunken and mesophyll is (2-3) layers of parenchyma cells, vascular bundles are collateral type. The pollen of A. americana was studied. The observation was made with L.M. (Light microscope) and S.E.M. (Scanning electron microscope) to determine the significance of pollen features as taxonomic characters. The pollen was monades, homopolar, monosulcate, and with large size, subprolate in shape from P/E ratio (Polar axis/ Equatorial diameter) and furrow length and width, exine thickness and ornamentation.
In this study, aromatic polyamide reverse osmosis membranes were used to remove zinc ions from electroplating wastewater. Influence of different operating conditions such as time, zinc concentration and pressure on reverse osmosis process efficiency was studied. The experimental results showed, concentration of zinc in permeate increase with increases of time from 0 to 70 min, and flux of water through membrane decline with time. While, the concentrations of zinc in permeate increase with the increase in feed zinc concentration (10–300 mg/l), flux decrease with the increment of feed concentration. The raise of pressure from 1 to 4 bar, the zinc concentration decreases and the flux increase. The highest recovery percentage was fou
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New types of hydrodesulfurization (HDS) catalyst Re-Ni-Mo/ γ-Al2O3 was prepared and tested separately with two prepared conventional HDS catalysts (Ni-Mo/ γ-Al2O3 and Co-Mo//γ-Al2O3) by using a pilot plant hydrotreatment unit. Activities of three prepared hydrodesulfurization catalysts were examined in hydrodesulfurization (HDS) of atmospheric gas oil at different temperatures 275 to 350 °C and LHSV 1 to 4 h-1, the reactions conducted under constant pressure 40 bar and H2/HC ratio 500 ml/ml .Moreover, the hydrogenation of aromatic (HAD) in gas oil has been studied. HDS was much improved by adding promoter Re to the Ni-Mo/Al2O3
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