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  
... 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
An investigation of the quadrupole deformation of Kr, Sr, Zr, and Mo isotopes has been conducted using the HFB method and SLy4 Skyrme parameterization. The primary role of occupancy of single particle state 2d5/2 in the existence of the weakly bound structure around N=50 is probed. Shell gaps are performed using a few other calculations for the doubly magic number 100Sn using different Skyrme parameterizations. We explore the interplays among neutron pairing strength and neutron density profile in two dimensions, along with the deformations of 100Sn.
(2)
(1)
During recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the investigation of the cytokines roles in pathogenesis of cancer, thus the study aimed at evaluating the level of tumor necrosis factor-alpha(TNF-?) in sera of Iraqi multiple myeloma (MM) patients. Beta 2-microglobulion (?2-m) was assessed to determine if there was any association between this cytokine and the level of ?2- m, as the latter is related to the stage of the disease. In addition, the age and gender were also taken into consideration. Furthermore, we investigated the relationship between IgG and TNF-? in sera of patients. 49 Iraqi patients (27 males and 22 females).The patients were also divided into two groups: the first group included (17) patients who were
... Show More
The duty of care is the essence of the error of negligence under the English legal system, and without it, responsibility for negligence cannot be judged, regardless of the extent of the damage incurred. contained in English law. In view of the importance of proving the existence of the duty of care on the defendant so that it is possible to judge his responsibility for negligence, the need arises to find a general principle to which the defendant is subject in order to decide whether he owes the plaintiff with the duty of care and therefore responsible for the negligence, and this is what we will explain in the research topic the study.
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
... Show More
The importance of the research in the preparation of special exercises to develop some types of basketball scoring as a contribution to help the physical education teacher to find successful educational alternatives. The purpose of the study was to prepare special exercises for the cognitive (cognitive) survey in the development of motor satisfaction and learning some types of Scoring for basketball for students. Learn about the effect of cognitive exercises in cognitive development in students. The survey included students from the first stage of the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports Science \ University of Diyala (159) divided into 6 people. The sample was randomized by (b) and (b) D) and after dispersion by the standard method In
... Show More
In addition to the primary treatment, biological treatment is used to reduce inorganic and organic components in the wastewater. The separation of biomass from treated wastewater is usually important to meet the effluent disposal requirements, so the MBBR system has been one of the most important modern technologies that use plastic tankers to transport biomass with wastewater, which works in pure biofilm, at low concentrations of suspended solids. However, biological treatment has been developed using the active sludge mixing process with MBBR. Turbo4bio was established as a sustainable and cost-effective solution for wastewater treatment plants in the early 1990s and ran on minimal sludge, and is easy to maintain. This
... Show More