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.
Abstract:
Organizations need today to move towards strategic innovation, which means the analysis of positions, especially the challenges faced by the change in the external environment, which makes it imperative for the organization that you reconsider their strategies and orientations and operations, a so-called re-engineering to meet those challenges and pressures. Now this research dilemma intellectual two-dimensional, yet my account in not Take writings and researchers effect strategic innovation in re-engineering business processes, according to science and to inform the researcher, and after the application represented in the non-application of such resear
... Show More
In the last few years, the literature conferred a great interest in studying the feasibility of using memristive devices for computing. Memristive devices are important in structure, dynamics, as well as functionalities of artificial neural networks (ANNs) because of their resemblance to biological learning in synapses and neurons regarding switching characteristics of their resistance. Memristive architecture consists of a number of metastable switches (MSSs). Although the literature covered a variety of memristive applications for general purpose computations, the effect of low or high conductance of each MSS was unclear. This paper focuses on finding a potential criterion to calculate the conductance of each MMS rather t
... Show More
(1)
This study seeks to examine the language context of the prominent Revolution’s poet, Moufdi Zakaria, in his anthology “ The Algerian Odyssey " )إلياذة الجزائر( in which he makes use of the Coranic terms explicitly and implicitly. Besides, it seeks to explore the content of his terms from a lexicographic and semantic point of view in their Islamic and human dimensions
Film and literature exchanges it’s influences since the early beginning of the motion pictures appearance .it was a phenomenon in other genres such as theatre ,short stories and novels .the film used out of this interaction with literature the content , themes and subjects whish were more attached to the society. based on that , the film gains it’s successes and wide spread of influences on it’s audiences who became more familiar with the motion picture style.Astrok , the French film critic wrote about “Camera the pain “ and called it as the a way of writing in the future .he was talking about the future’s role of the film .It is the importance of the film in the creation and documenting the life and its various fields.Becaus
... Show More
Young people represent the power and cornerstone of societies and their superiority is linked to their well-being. Their empowerment is as essential as the heart to the body, if it is corrupt, then the whole body is corrupt, and vice versa. The exposure to extremism and pressure from their families leads to violent acts and crimes for obtaining money through unknown organized bodies. This will drive them to fail in their life in an attempt to fulfill their most basic needs, which they have been deprived of by their families, the government, and other institutions. Therefore, governments should provide job opportunities for young people and provide entertainment centers, sports clubs, and family education centers that raise awareness of s
... Show MorePraise be to God, Lord of the Worlds, and prayers and peace be upon the most honorable of creation, Muhammad, whom God sent as a mercy to the worlds, and his pure God and his faithful companions. The Islamic heritage was replete with texts issued from among the pure infallibility, which constituted a prominent teacher that takes the student to stop there in search of its goals, purposes and beauty. The choice was made from those texts that were issued by the imams of Muslims in the Abbasid era, namely Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, his son Imam Ali al-Hadi and his grandson Imam Hassan Zaki al-Askari. (Peace be upon them), and scholars have called them (sons of satisfaction), and researchers have shed light on these texts from rhetorical, artistic
... Show MoreE-learning applications according to the levels of enlightenment (STEM Literacy) for physics teachers in the secondary stage. The sample consists of (400) teachers, at a rate of (200) males (50%), and (200)females (50%), distributed over (6) directorates of education in Baghdad governorate on both sides of Rusafa and Karkh. To verify the research goals, the researcher built a scale of e-learning applications according to the levels of STEM Literacy, which consists of (50) items distributed over (5) levels. The face validity of the scale and its stability were verified by extracting the stability coefficient through the internal consistency method “Alf-Cronbach”. The following statistical means were used: Pearson correlation coefficient,
... Show MoreThe progress of science in all its branches and levels made great civilized changes of
our societies in the present day, it's a result of the huge amount of knowledge, the increase of
number of students, and the increase of community awareness proportion of the importance of
education in schools and universities, it became necessary for us as educators to look at
science from another point of view based on the idea of scientific development of curricula
and teaching methods and means of education, and for the studying class environment as a
whole, by computer and internet use in education to the emergence of the term education
technology, which relies on the use of modern technology to provide educational content to<