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 research aims to identify the effect of jigsaw strategy in learning achievement and engaging for the third grade intermediate students in chemistry. The research sample consisted of (61) students distributed in two experimental and control groups. The research tools consisted in the achievement test and the measure of engaging learning. The results showed that there are statistically significant differences at the level of (α = 0.05) between the experimental group and the control group in both the achievement test and the measure of learning involvement for the benefit of the experimental group. In this light, the researcher recommended the use of jigsaw strategy for teaching the subject matter. Lamia because of its impact in raising
... Show MoreActive learning is a teaching method that involves students actively participating in activities, exercises, and projects within a rich and diverse educational environment. The teacher plays a role in encouraging students to take responsibility for their own education under their scientific and pedagogical supervision and motivates them to achieve ambitious educational goals that focus on developing an integrated personality for today’s students and tomorrow’s leaders. It is important to understand the impact of two proposed strategies based on active learning on the academic performance of first-class intermediate students in computer subjects and their social intelligence. The research sample was intentionally selected, consis
... Show More
(4)
(1)
The present study aimed at ((building an educational -learning design based on the theory of Merrill in (CDT) and measuring the effectiveness of this design in the motivation and achievement of the high school fifth grade students to art education in the subject of the history of modern art)). The research community is made of fifth grade preparatory students in the secondary school of Umm Ayman in the Directorate of Education of Baghdad / Ar-Rusafa in a simple random way. The study sample (58 students) was chosen from section (e) to study according to Merrill theory (CDT) and section (d) to study according to the traditional way.
The pilot design of the control and experimental equivalent groups that have partial control in t
Objective: To assess the clinical learning environment and clinical training for students' in maternal and child
health nursing.
Methodology: A descriptive study was conducted on non probability sample (purposive) of (175) students' in
Nursing College/ University of Baghdad for the period of June 19th to July 18th 2013. A questionnaire was used as a
tool of data collection to fulfill with objective of the study and consisted of three parts, including demographic,
clinical learning environment and clinical training for students' in maternal and child health nursing. Descriptive
statistical analyses were used to analyze the data.
Results: The results of the study revealed that the 65.1% of student at age which ranged b
This research aims at identifying the communicative habits and content reflections on the communication process, especially the young audience which is one of the main group for whom the announcements are made. Because young people face life with passion and aspiration making them respond to each effect used by the media in the design of the advertising using all the effective techniques, attractive methods for young children like depending on drama, technical tricks, music and logos easily to be remembered and responded to the desires of the young in their entertainment. This research also aims at identifying the impact of the internet as a channel of commercial advertising on the purchasing behavior of young people at the universities
... Show More
The problem of research is that there are ways to protect and sustain environmentally important sites in Iraq. There are no documentary sources for these sites, such as the natural landscape of natural and important natural resources, which suffer from severe environmental neglect
Witnessing human societies with the turn of the century atheist twenty huge revolution in information , the result of scientific and technological developments rapidly in space science and communications , and that made the whole world is like a small village not linked by road as it was in ancient times, through the rapid transportation as was the case a few years ago , thanks to the remote sensing devices that roam in space observant everything on the ground , that the information networks that overflowed the world a tremendous amount of information provided for each inhabitants of the earth , which made this information requirement for human life and human survival and well-being , as it has allowed that information to humans opportun
... Show MoreOrganizational learning is one of the most important means of human resource development in organizations, but most of the organizations, especially public ones do not realize the importance of organizational learning enough, and estimated his role accurately in building intellectual capital, the resource competitive importantly for organizations of the third millennium and who suffers is other end of lack of understanding of its meaning and how to prove its presence and measured in public organizations, so there is the need for this research, which aims to investigate the effect of organizational learning its processes (knowledge acquisition, Information transfer, Interpreting the information, Organizational me
... Show More
(1)