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.
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
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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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Identify the effect of an educational design according to the repulsive (allosteric) learning model on the achievement of chemistry and lateral thinking. The sample consisted of (59) students from third-grade intermediate students. They were randomly distributed into two groups (experimental and control), and the equivalence was done in (chronological age, previous achievement in chemistry, intelligence, lateral thinking). The (30) students from experimental group were taught according to the instructional design, other 29 students from the (control) group were taught according to the usual method. Two tests done, one of them is an achievement test consisted of (30) items of the type of multiple choice, the other was a lateral think
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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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The research aimed to find the effectiveness of teaching impact of the reflex learning strategy on the fifth class female student achievement of the geography content material). The researcher adopted the null hypotheses (there are no statistically significant differences at (0,05) level between the women score mean of the experimental group student who has been taught by the cement material assigned by the reflex learning strategy, and that of the control group who have been taught by the traditional method on the achievement test. The researcher adopted the post-test experimental design to measure students’ achievement. The population of the present study has been limited to the fifth literary class female stud
... Show MoreNeed 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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This research is a study of the difficulties of learning the Arabic language that faces Arabic language learners in the Kurdistan Region, by revealing its types and forms, which can be classified into two categories:
The first type has difficulties related to the educational system, the source of which is the Arabic language itself, the Arabic teacher or the learner studying the Arabic language or the educational curriculum, i.e. educational materials, or the educational process, i.e. the method used in teaching.
The second type: general difficulties related to the political aspect, the source of which is the policy of the Kurdistan Regional Government in marginalizing the Arabic language and replacing the forefront of th
... Show MoreIn The Name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful
This is a study dedicated to explaining the conditions of the end of heaven, stage by stage; And to draw the final picture of it, through the facts of the Qur’an, and to make the contextual integration of the verses of the end of heaven, and their arrangement in an intentional arrangement, a path that guides us to knowing the integrated picture of it on the Day of Resurrection, according to scientific interpretation.
The importance and usefulness of the research lies in:
Extracting the order of the stages of the end of heaven, from its first state to its last, which came in separate verses of the Qur’an, each one of which was placed in a surah that was consistent w
... Show MoreThe anatomic characteristics of the leaves of 22 taxa of Stachys L. representing seven of the currently recognized sections distributed in northern Iraq, were examined. The study did not found any variations in the characteristics of the stomata system of the leaves.Therewere variations with a good taxonomic value in other anatomic characteristics.Thevariations in characters of the mesophyll tissue in S.kurdica var.brevidens Bom ex Bhattacharjeewas bifacial but in S.kurdica var.kurdica Boiss. & Hohen.was unifacial .The study also found that the taxa S.benthamiana Bioss., S.lanigera (Bornm.) Rech.f. andS.kotscyi Bioss. with 3 vascular bundles in the middle vein while the taxa S.ballotiformis Vatke., S.megalodonta Hausskn. &Bo
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Abstract: As human history is implicated in landscape or the natural history, it can be stated that the origins of the Caribbean writers' conflict, in general, are the colonial history of West India. That history which tells the story behind not only their fragmented identity, but also the problems connected to their language as well. Building on the arguments of the prominent Postcolonial ecoccritics such as Elizabeth DeLoughrey, George Handley, Helen Tiffin, and Graham Huggan, this research analyzes selected poems by Derek Walcott's which are bounded in his volume, Collected Poems. It shows how the Caribbean history has been erased due to the brutality of colonization offering landscape as a reliable source which has recorded that history
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