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
The current research aims to identify the effect of using a model of generative learning in the achievement of first-middle students of chemical concepts in science. The researcher adopted the null hypothesis, which is there is no statistically significant difference at the level (0.05) between the mean scores of the experimental group who study using the generative learning model and the average scores of the control group who study using the traditional method in the chemical concepts achievement test. The research consisted of (200) students of the first intermediate at Al-Farqadin Intermediate School for Boys affiliated with the Directorate of General Education in Baghdad Governorate / Al-Karkh 3 wit
... Show More‘Ode to a Nightingale’(1819) is a typical poem of a Romantic poet like John Keats, but
‘The Nightingale’(1798) is an uncharacteristic poem of a Romantic poet like Coleridge.
The paper proposes a comparison between Coleridge’s ‘The Nightingale’ and Keats’
‘Ode to a Nightingale’.Coleridge’s poem diverges from the Romantic norm; it carries some
characteristics new to Romantic poetry like the realistic and objective portrayals of nature and
the nightingale, while Keats’ poem adhere to the characteristics of Romantic poetry; it
portrays nature and the nightingale subjectively and unrealistically. Coleridge’s poem is very
much influenced by the scientific approaches to environment, and natural his
In the analysis of multiple linear regression, the problem of multicollinearity and auto-correlation drew the attention of many researchers, and given the appearance of these two problems together and their bad effect on the estimation, some of the researchers found new methods to address these two problems together at the same time. In this research a comparison for the performance of the Principal Components Two Parameter estimator (PCTP) and The (r-k) class estimator and the r-(k,d) class estimator by conducting a simulation study and through the results and under the mean square error (MSE) criterion to find the best way to address the two problems together. The results showed that the r-(k,d) class estimator is the best esti
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Need organizations today to move towards strategic thinking which means analyzing situations faced by particular challenges of change in the external environment, which makes it imperative for The Organization That to reconsider their strategies and orientations and operations, a so-called re-engineering to meet those challenges and pressures, to try to achieve improvement root in the installation of the organization and methodscompletion of its work towards achieving high levels of performance and that is reflected to achieve its objectives, and this is what aims to Current search to deal with implications characteristics of strategic thinking in the stages of application re-engineering business of the company General Industries
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The organization of sporting activities at the local and international levels requires a lot of money, which has increased interest in marketing in the sports field, as it is one of the modern topics that represent the basic knowledge needed by the sports marketer and which represents one of the basic concepts to enhance the benefits and returns of sports clubs. The research problem was the weak awareness of the members of the administrative body of Iraqi sports clubs of the role of sports marketing in the dimensions of competitive superiority and not exploiting them in the optimal way that enables clubs to achieve competitive superiority. The research aims to know the role of sports marketing in competitive superi
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Knowledge represents the foundation stone for the work of all organizations, are working who leads the thinking of individuals is the ability that leads to behavior based on rationality, it is the work that creates value to the organization and thus gain access to performance winning where that knowledge is a new type of capital based on the thought and experience and is the so-called intellectual capital, which is renewable and is constantly evolving. The study sought to explain the role of the climax knowledge in achieving the highest levels of performance Organizational and then access to the performance winning in educational organizations the study sample, was found to be a co
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The study aimed to monitor the concept of reputation in the previous literature, its relationship to mental image and identity, and to reveal recent trends in its measurement Techniques.
The study relied on a descriptive approach using library survey and comparative analysis, and the study reached following conclusions:
Despite the beginning of the first signs of reputation In the fifties of the last century, however, Defining and standardizing the concept with clear and specific dimensions began in the 1990s and the beginning of the third millennium. The concept of reputation refers to the stakeholders’ overall evaluation of organizations, which reflects their perceptions of
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