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.
Copper (I) complex containing folic acid ligand was prepared and characterized on the basis of metal analyses, UV-VIS, FTIR spectroscopies and magnetic susceptibility. The density functional theory (DFT) as molecular modeling calculations was used to determine the donor atoms of folic acid ligand which appear clearly at oxygen atoms binding to hydrogen. Detection of donation sights is supported by theoretical parameters such as geometry, mulliken population, mulliken charge and HOMO-LUMO gap obtained by DFT calculations.
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The aim of this research is to develop qualitative workouts based on certain sensory perceptions for the development of offensive basketball abilities and to determine their impact on female pupils. Several findings, based on the au-thor's extensive expertise instructing basketball materials and our closeness to the sample, revealed deficits in some sensory perceptions “in the game of basketball”, which impair the accuracy of passing the ball to the best team-mate. It also affects the pace of dribbling and the difficulty of selecting the op-timal moment and distance to fire. Therefore, the researcher designs qualita-tive activities based on many sensory experiences, including distance, speed, force, and direction shift. In addition, the
... Show MoreIt is axiomatic that languages mirror the world view of their users. Manipulating honorific forms among people inevitably reflects this truth . Honorifics are conventionalized forms or expressions manifested in all the world's languages and are used to express the social status of the participants in the verbal interaction and to convey indications like politeness and respect . English is no exception. However the question is what exactly creates these forms and their meanings. Although honorifics have been extensively researched from a grammatical and semantic angle , yet they haven’t received that significant attention i
... Show MoreThe right to property is one of the most prominent and most important of the fundamental rights that the individual enjoys, whether national or foreign, both of them have their own private property that may not be affected except for the requirements of the country's economic development or what is known as the public benefit, and the Iraqi legislator did not specify what is meant by the removal of foreign investment. Of the bilateral international agreements (BITS), as it determined its terms and methods, the properties of foreign investors may be expropriated in a direct and indirect way.
This study aimed to explore The Degree of Practicing of the Sixth Primary Social Studies’ Teachers in Iraq for the Principles of Active Learning from their Point of view
The study society consisted of 230 male and femalesocial studiesteachers’ subjects for the sixth primary grade in Al-Anbar General Directorate of Education. 160 of them were selected to represent the sample of the study with a percent of (70%) from the original society. To achieve the aims of the study, the researchers prepared a questionnaire consisting of (43) items which represented the active learning principles. The validity and stability of the tool were verified. The researchers used the descriptive approach to suit the objectives of this study. &
... Show MoreThis study aims to explore the impact of the interaction of the university leadership and the university organizational environment on the performance level of the staff at Al-Maaqal university. This university was chosen as a field of study because it is a new university and needs studies that develops and contributes to improve its overall performance. The problem defined by the following question: to what extent does the interaction of the university leadership and the university organizational environment affect the performance level of the teaching staff at AlMaaqal University?). The method of this study adopted a major hypothesis in which there is a statistically significant effect of university leadership and university environment o
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The emergence of oil fields and subsequent changes in adjacent land use are known to affect settlements and communities. Everywhere the industry emerges, there is little understanding about the impact of oil fields on land use in the surrounding areas. The oil industry in Iraq is one of the most important industries and is almost the main industry in the Iraqi economic sector, and it is very clear that this industry is spread over large areas, and at the same time adjoins with population communities linked to it developmentally.
The rapid development and expansion of oil extraction activities in various regions has led to many challenges related to land-use planning and management. Here, the problem of research arises on th
... Show MoreThe objectives of this study revolve around identifying the extent of funding impact on the future of the printed Iraqi press, and whether it threatens their chances of survival, stating the extent of technological development on the income of the printed newspaper, and identifying the causes of the financial crisis on the newspaper. This research is classified as descriptive research, and the researcher used the survey method, and adopted the questionnaire of the views of the contactors, in five Iraqi newspapers (morning - extent - time - the way of the people - the call). The research community included (68) respondents, whereby the comprehensive inventory method was used to define the research community, and the researcher used t
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The objectives of this study revolve around identifying the extent of funding impact on the future of the printed Iraqi press, and whether it threatens their chances of survival, stating the extent of technological development on the income of the printed newspaper, and identifying the causes of the financial crisis on the newspaper.
This research is classified as descriptive research, and the researcher used the survey method, and adopted the questionnaire of the views of the contactors, in five Iraqi newspapers (morning - extent - time - the way of the people - the call).
The research community included (68) respondents, whereby the comprehensive inventory method was used to define the research community, and the researcher used
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This research aims at clarifying the concept of social auditing, which is one of the most important reasons for its emergence is social responsibility accounting and its role in measuring the social performance of enterprises. The study also aimed to know how social auditing has an impact and its role in improving the social performance of business organizations, and the research refers to testing the hypotheses of an impact of social auditing on social performance through a commitment to social responsibility. The research sample consisted of 200 individuals from 20 Algerian business organizations and represented individuals who were researched in managers and em
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