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.
Nutrient agar medium with various concentrations of cefotaxime was used for isolation spontaneous mutants from wild type strain of P.aeruginosa PHA-1. Eighty-two mutants were successfully isolated with the viable count 52×107 , these mutants were confirmed as spontaneous not physiological adaption mutants by reculture on the same medium. Then, wild type PHA-1 and mutants were examined for production pyocyanin; a blue greenish pigment was clearly noticed on King A medium. Remarkably the mutant strain named S300-8 was distinguished in productivity in comparison with wild type strain PHA-1; the amount of pigment was 56.0667mg/l and 74.53mg/l respectively. In addition, pyocyanin produced by mutant strain S300-8 revealed a potent efficacy again
... Show MoreA novel series of liquid crystalline compounds containing 2,4-thiazolidinedione units with varying terminal alkyl chain lengths was successfully synthesized and characterized. The chemical structures of the synthesized compounds were confirmed by FT-IR, ¹H-NMR, and mass spectrometry. The mesomorphic behavior was investigated using polarized optical microscopy (POM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Compounds [V]₄, [V]₅, and [V]₆ exhibited enantiotropic nematic phases, while compound [V]₈ displayed a smectic A (SmA) phase. No liquid crystalline behavior was observed for compound [V]₃. The liquid crystalline properties were found to depend on the terminal-to-lateral chain length ratio, molecular geometry, and the nature
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This research Sought to identify the correlation relationships and the impact of each of the job description and perceived organizational support, Excellent Job performance of the heads of academic departments in the faculties of the University of Sulaymaniyah Iraqi Kurdistan Region, totaling (89) as President, and to achieve this was Default plan includes research variables as well as the formulation of a number of preparation fundamental assumptions, and researchers used a questionnaire for this purpose as a tool head of the collection of data and information, as it was distributed (80) copies, and the number of retrieved them (76) a copy of a valid statistical analysis, as well as conducting personal i
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Mishrif Formation is the main reservoir in oil-fields (North Rumaila, South Rumaila, Majnoon, Zubair and West Qurna) which located at Basrah southern Iraq. The Inductively coupled plasma-Mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) was used for the water chemistry analysis and Scanning Electron Microprobe (SEM) for the purpose of mineralogy diagnosis. A weak acidic water of salinity six-time greater than seawater plays a role in generating the formation pressure and controlling the fluid flow. The potentiometric subsurface maps were modeled and the direction of super-pressure sites that are of a great importance in the oil exploration were marked to pay attention during future drilling.
HR Al-Hamamy, AA Noaimi, IA Al-Turfy, AI Rajab, Journal of Cosmetics, Dermatological Sciences and Applications, 2015
This study involved the effect of anew nickel (II) complexs with formla [NiL2(H2O)2].2.5ETOH where L=Bis[5-(p-nitrophenyL)-4-phenyL-1,2,4-traizole-3-dithocarbamato hydrazide] diaqua. nickel(II). Ethanol(2.5).and anti-cancer drug cyclophosphamide on specific actifity of two Liver enzymes (GOT,GPT) in the (Liver,kidney) tissues and on the creatinine Level in the kidney byUtilizing an invivosystem in femalmice.The result showed that inhibition in the activity of GPT and GOT enzymes in theLiver and in both nickel (II) complex and cyclophosphamide drug (CP) . mice weretreated with three doses (90,180,320) µg/mouse for three days for each group.The Liver show's the highest rate of GPT inhibition was about 97.43% at180µg/mouse regarding the ki
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This work studies the role of serum apelin-36 and Glutathione S-transferases (GST) activity in association with the hormonal, metabolic profiles and their link to the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in healthy and patients' ladies with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). A total of fifty-four (PCOS) patients and thirty-one healthy woman as a control have been studied. The PCOS patients were subdivided on the basis of body-mass-index (BMI), into 2-subgroups (the first group was obese-PCOS with BMI ≥ 30 and the second group was non-obese PCOS MBI<30). Fasting-insulin-levels and Lipid-profile, Homeostatic-model assessment-of-insulin-resistance (HOMA-IR), follicle-stimulating-hormone (FSH), luteinizing-hormone (LH), testosterone and
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The effect of cognitive trips via the Internet (web quest) accompanying practical lessons in learning some basic handball skills for female students