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A Study of the Problems of Learning and Translating Idioms
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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.

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Publication Date
Mon Jul 28 2025
Journal Name
Retos
The effect of the beehive strategy on deliberate thinking and learning the setting skill of volleyball among female students at the College of Physical Education and Sports Sciences for Woman
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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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Publication Date
Mon Jul 28 2025
Journal Name
Retos
The effect of the beehive strategy on deliberate thinking and learning the setting skill of volleyball among female students at the College of Physical Education and Sports Sciences for Woman
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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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Publication Date
Wed May 02 2012
Journal Name
Journal Of Planner And Development
The Effect of Time and Place Dimensions on Changing the Quality Dimensions of Sizes of Cities: A Case Study (Baghdad city)
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The 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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Publication Date
Wed Jan 01 2020
Journal Name
International Journal Of Innovation Creativity And Change.
The Role of Strategic Improvisation on the Entrepreneurial Orientation; a Field Study in a Sample from the Rafidain Bank
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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

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Publication Date
Sat Feb 02 2019
Journal Name
Journal Of The College Of Education For Women
The effect of learning program in developing some social concepts for nursery kids about ( 4 – 5 ): The effect of learning program in developing some social concepts for nursery kids about ( 4 – 5 )
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Abstact:
Nursery is one of educational institution in the process of developing the
social concepts that it includes a quirking the knowledge and experiences that
help the kid to adjust with environment through arrangement words ,
movements and concrete things which are transferred to the kids so as to
realize these concepts .
Social concepts are numbers of words and statements with social nature
which the kids learn through the family or nursery in order to effect their
educational style of independent and helping the others .
The re searcher adopted this theory because of the little studies in the
filed of social concepts in the nursery.
The aims of the study are as following :
1- building tools for

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Publication Date
Wed Jun 03 2020
Journal Name
Political Sciences Journal
The Muslim Arab Self and the image of the other, religiously and culturally different: a critical analytical study of the causes and forms of political and social intolerance in Iraq
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This research aims to analyze the intellectual and civilizational regression that afflicted Iraqi and Arab society due to political and religious tyranny and internal conflicts, which was reflected in the deterioration of human rights values and the absence of equality and justice in dealing with the other religiously, which affected the reluctance of members of religious groups to interact with their national societies and then migrate to Outside, which contributed to a double loss, in terms of the loss of these societies by productive and effective national competencies, and in terms of distorting the image of Islam. The research stressed that the first treatments of this phenomenon are the consolidation of the values of citize

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Publication Date
Sat Jun 18 2022
Journal Name
International Journal Of Health Sciences
E-learning applications and their significance among students of the Department of Chemistry in the Faculty of Education for Pure Sciences – Ibn Al-Haytham
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--The objective of the current research is to identify: 1) Preparing a scale level for e-learning applications, 2) What is the relationship between the applications of e-learning and the students of the Department of Chemistry at the Faculty of Education for Pure Sciences/ Ibn Al-Haytham – University of Baghdad. To achieve the research objectives, the researcher used the descriptive approach because of its suitability to the nature of the study objectives. The researcher built a scale for e-learning applications that consists of (40) items on the five-point Likrat scale (I agree, strongly agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree). He also adopted the scale of scientific values, and it consists of (40) items on a five-point scale as wel

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Publication Date
Mon May 09 2016
Journal Name
Iraqi Journal Of Market Research And Consumer Protection
Choosing the Planning Aggregate Production strategy of the Organization of service - A Case Study in Baghdad hotel: Choosing the Planning Aggregate Production strategy of the Organization of service - A Case Study in Baghdad hotel
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Constitute a planning problem on the basis of personal experience and self-governance in the service organizations away from quantitative scientific method in planning an anchor and a platform, who made a recent research study, analysis and interpretation through scientific methodology adopted which formed its contents, The research aims to identify the true reality of production planning in service organizations, specifically in the Baghdad Hotel as a society to look, in order to assess the best strategy through the standard cost of the strategies of tracking and settlement to cope with developments on services demand changes, Search results confirmed that the settlement rates of production strategy is the best strategy in accordance wi

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Publication Date
Tue Nov 01 2022
Journal Name
Rimak International Journal Of Humanities And Social Sciences
THE PRESS TREATMENT OF THE VISIT OF "POPE FRANCIS" AND ITS REPERCUSSIONS ON COMMUNITY PEACE IN IRAQ... A SURVEY STUDY...
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The importance of the research from a practical point of view lies in the fact that it presents a set of statistics and data that give a clear picture of how the Iraqi newspapers (the subject of the study) deal with the visit of "Pope Francis" to Iraq ، and what are the most prominent indicators and manifestations of that visit in promoting societal peace among the Iraqi public. From a scientific point of view، the research provides another scientific addition to the media library، especially with regard to journalistic treatments and methods of framing the Arab international press for the subject of the visit، which could be a starting point for other researchers to complete qualitative research in this field. The research prob

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Publication Date
Thu Aug 01 2024
Journal Name
Al-kindy College Medical Journal
Through the Eyes of Healthcare Providers, the Necessity and Challenges of Implementing Medication Reconciliation at Hospital Discharge: A Qualitative Study
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Background: Medication reconciliation can include medication reviewing and providing counseling and a list of all the medications during every transition of care. Objectives: to explore in-depth the perspectives of Iraqi physicians and pharmacists regarding the necessity of medication reconciliation at hospital discharge and identify the possible benefits and challenges that could face its implementation. Subjects and Methods: A qualitative study included semi-structured interviews with pharmacists and physicians working at a public teaching hospital in Iraq. The interviews were conducted face-to-face from February to March 2023. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data generated from the interviews. Results: In th

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