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.
Objective: Develop a deliberate thinking scale for the setting skill in volleyball for second-year female students in the College of Physical Education and Sports Sciences for Woman. Research methodology: The researchers used the experimental approach, employing a two-group approach (pre-test and post-test), to suit the nature of the research. The research community comprised (65) second-year female students from the College of Physical Education and Sports Sciences for Woman at the University of Baghdad for the academic year 2024-2025. The research sample was randomly selected, with (15) students in Section A, the experimental group, and (15) students in Section B, the control group. This group represented (46%) of the students. Th
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As performers in a social world, we communicate with other people by sharing information on many different levels. Each utterance includes linguistic information and conveys much information about the speaker’s identity. Variation in voice quality indexes information about the speaker and marks the speaker’s identity as a unique individual. The present study aims to validate the belief that each individual has an inalienable voice print that can’t be imitated. The study verifies that, even the more similar personality between two individuals, or the close position in society the variance is voice quality. The acoustic analysis is performed via analysing the acoustic parameters namely: the fundamental frequency, amplitude, inten
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Study of Direct Marketing techniques and determining the scope of the suitability of each of them in the application in the Iraqi market - An analytical and explorative study for sample of views for wholesaler in Baghdad. The essential idea of the research is to go into the most important concepts which have been mentioned in the direct marketing and determining its current and most important techniques and knowing the scope of applying these techniques in Baghdad main markets (Karrada, Jamilah, shorja, Baya area, zeyouna and new Baghdad) and which of those techniques most applicable in these markets. The research took a sample of (100) wholesalers who practice the activities of selling nutritional items, auto and outs spare part
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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
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Iraqi EFL teachers face problems in teaching “English for Iraq Series” for primary public school pupils. In this paper, the researchers are going to identify the main problems faced by our teachers and try to find solutions to these problems. To achieve the aim of the study, list of questions asked and from teachers’ responses, the researchers have got an idea about the main problems which are related to textbook material, parents, learners, environment and technology. Therefore, the researchers adapted a questionnaire to achieve the purpose of the study with some changes and modifications. This questionnaire with five point scale (strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree, strongly disagree). To achieve face validity, the
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The research aims to identify the role of strategic improvisation as an independent variable with its dimensions (Building the Solution, Intuition, Adaptation, and Spontaneity) and the Entrepreneurial Orientation as a dependent variable with its dimensions (Identifying Opportunities, Creativity, Adopting risk, and Vision). This research has been applied in the Rafidain Bank and its branches (Sunk, People, Al-Firdaws, and Alawiya); it used the questionnaire as a basic tool for collecting information. The sample was intentionality, which included all the heads of departments in the bank’s branches, which amounted to (33) workers, and data on the questionnaire paragraphs of 28 were processed using the SPSS V.23 and AMOS V.23). The most impor
... Show MoreThe city has normal natural state, and the man has a usual movement, change and search for the new .Also, the city has a usual change and transform in its time, place and quality (sizes)structures. The city has a solid memory diving into the past and the future and reflects The real present, and this memory has a timing layers change into real materialistic place making the city has accumulated overlapping circles which is hard to break u , and it broadcasts the lockup timing density ,in which there is no visual record precisely, it is just like((the social record)) that evaluates the un visual relationships between the components and parts of the city (community and form) in a visual quiet exhibition and transform change inside.
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