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.
This research aims to clarify the conceptual framework of social entrepreneurship shows the importance of the development of social entrepreneurship according to the contextual aspects and the social value achieved from these works. It also identifies the degree of level of a sample of women entrepreneurs in Iraq for the extent of the relationship between social entrepreneurship and women's empowerment. It also explains the impact of entrepreneurial work in empowering women and the extent to which there are individual differences between the average scores of the sample members’ estimation of the level of social entrepreneurship according to social status, age group, educational qualification, and specialization according to the s
... Show MoreThe aim of the research is to design educational software based on Web Quests and to measure its effectiveness in developing information search skills of students at the Department of Educational and Psychological Sciences. The research is experimental in nature using pre-post measurement. The research sample consisted of (91) male and female students from the second grade in the Department of Educational and Psychological Sciences, they were divided into two equal groups; the experimental group consisted of (47) students who adopted the educational software as a studying method, and the control group consisted of (44) students who follow the traditional method. The researchers prepared a list of skills for searching information and they
... Show MoreAssessment should give more attention on the learning achievement of the curriculum. Portfolio- based learning assessment (PBLA) is utilized in language learning materials recently .It is assessment tools to test the learners’ learning for instance open-ended problem solving, and creative and critical thinking, imaginative, reflective, have the capacity to apply their information in new issues, and to express oral and composing. This paper aims to discover the impact of utilizing (PBLA) on students’ performance at College of Education (Ibn –Rushd) in English Department the third stage. To fulfill the aim, a sample of the study is (64) EFL students of two groups. The study used a test and an instrument design .The test group ut
... Show MoreThe study aimed to determine the effect of the flipped learning model in improving the acquisition of the overhand serve skill in volleyball among second-year students at the College of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, University of Baghdad, for the academic year 2024/2025. The study used an experimental design with a control group and pre-post testing, on a purposive sample consisting of 12 students. The model relied on watching short videos before class via the SGS application, and practical application in class at a rate of three sessions per week. The results showed a significant improvement in performance, as the calculated value (t = 5.356) exceeded the tabulated value (2.042) at a significance level of 0.05. The percentage of s
... Show MoreOnline examination is an integral and vital component of online learning. Student authentication is going to be widely seen when one of these major challenges within the online assessment. This study aims to investigate potential threats to student authentication in the online examinations. Adopting cheating in E-learning in a university of Iraq brings essential security issues for e-exam . In this document, these analysts suggested a model making use of a quantitative research style to confirm the suggested aspects and create this relationship between these. The major elements that might impact universities to adopt cheating electronics were declared as Educational methods, Organizational methods, Teaching methods, Technical meth
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Education around the world has been negatively affected by the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Many institutions had to transition to distance learning in compliance with the enforced safety measures. Distance learning might work well for settings with stable internet connections, professional technical teams, and basic implementation of technology in education. In contrast, distance learning faces serious challenges in less fortunate settings with inferior infrastructure. This report aims to shed light on the immediate action steps taken at a leading pharmacy school in Iraq to accommodate for the enforced changes in pharmacy education. The University of Baghdad College of Pharmacy went from less than minimal technology impl
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After the information revolution that occurred in the Western world, and the developments in all fields, especially in the field of education and e-learning, from an integrated system based on the effective employment of information and communication technology in the teaching and learning processes through an environment rich in computer and Internet applications, the community and the learner were able to access information sources and learning at any time and place, in a way that achieves mutual interaction between the elements of the system and the surrounding environment. After the occurrence of the phenomenon of Covid 19, it led to a major interruption in all educational systems that had never happened before, and the disrupt
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This study aims to know the extent of the impact of Strategic Leadership as an independent variable in Strategic Learning as a dependent variable to help the senior leadership in Anbar University to take the right decisions to develop Strategic Learning programs in light of the circumstances of the Covid-19 and the sudden decisions adopted by the university to switch to E-learning and to blend. The survey was conducted by distributing a questionnaire that was adopted as a primary tool in data collection from the study sample represented by the university's senior leaders, An intentional random sample of (105) was selected from our community of (127), the data were analyzed by (SPSS) Depe
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