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.
Record, verify, and showcase your peer review contributions in a format you can include in job and funding applications (without breaking reviewer anonymity).
The research is based on the basic idea that companies today are moving towards a new trend towards protecting the environment coupled with the increasing wareness of the pollution damage caused by these companies due to their operations and activities in the environment. The two main reasons that led the researchers to choose this subject is the need to adapt the companies themselves in response to successive developments, The great development was that companies moved from the sole economic responsibility of the business to social responsibility by emphasizing socially responsible profit. The problem of research is the knowledge of the availability of the dimensions of the green processing series in Kirkuk Cement Factory The re
... Show More
A study of the singlet and triplet states of two electron systems in the first excited state was performed using a simple quantum mechanical model, which assigns the 1s,and 2s orbital with two different variational parameters. Our results agree with a high level calculation used by Snow and Bills.
Many designs have been suggested for unipolar magnetic lenses based on changing the width of the inner bore and fixing the other geometrical parameters of the lens to improve the performance of unipolar magnetic lenses. The investigation of a study of each design included the calculation of its axial magnetic field the magnetization of the lens in addition to the magnetic flux density using the Finite Element Method (FEM) the Magnetic Electron Lenses Operation (MELOP) program version 1 at three different values of current density (6,4,2 A/mm2). As a result, the clearest values and behaviors were obtained at current density (2 A/mm2). it was found that the best magnetizing properties, the high
... Show More
(1)
Perhaps the issue of media and the press, especially one of the most common topics that people deliberate and deal with permanently and continuously. An issue of such significance has pushed researchers to put the following question, “Is it possible to live without media?”, “Can people ignore the newspaper, radio, TV, or the other communication means?”
The answer is very simple. It is difficult for civilized society to overtake information, or dispense with circulation, at the individual or collective level. Yet, the question of how to make the media and how it determines its content still requires extensive media experience; and knowledge of the social structure and its relations; and ac
... Show More
The article aims to consider the concept of language metaphor in Russian and Arabic languages and the problem of metaphor functioning in language, since it is one of the most important figurative components of the structural organization of the text and an important means of reflecting the national culture of each people. and often in revealing the image of a metaphor one can feel the full flexibility of the language and its beauty.
Importance of the research:
The importance of any educational or scientific research through its intellectual arena of facts supply the individual and society, Supports Knowledge and Science Group, which raised will be locked in these topics in the future.
This research seeks to shed light on the image and the role of women and men in the books of the Arabic language in primary education (primary), To illustrate the negative effects of the phenomenon of sexism in textbooks, And its negative impact on emerging, And stay away as much as possible about the distinction between the sexes in the roles and qualities in textbooks traditional stereotypes and remove that put both sexes templates hinder the development of the individual and t
من الاهمية دراسة التاريخ كونه يمدنا بحلول للمشكلات المعاصرة في ضوء خبرات الماضي، ودراسة سلبيات وايجابيات هذه الحلول، وانطلاقا من مبدأ أن ذوي الإعاقة البصرية طاقة بشرية لابد من استثمارها بما يخدم تقدم وازدهار المجتمع، فمن الأهمية تسليط الضوء على هذه الفئة والإسهام بنقل صورة مشرفة عنها، قد تكون دافعا للآخرين ممن اوقفهم انطفاء شعاع النور والبصيرة عن اكمال حياتهم لشرارة امل تعيد لهم شغفهم في الحياة، وته
... Show More
(2)
(3)
Broadcasting across satellites has become an important media phenomenon and largely available for watchers. As the receiver can see the events at the very moment and at any spot in the world. This study aims to discover the degree of the extent of exposure of Iraqi people to the news broadcasting satellites in Arabic language, (Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Al Ekhbariya Satellite Channels) as one of the media that serves the public; and to discover the range of these Satellite Channels in covering the local Iraqi situation in different sides and aspects; and to know the significance of the Iraqi people in watching those news programmers; and state the motives behind the Iraqi public's dependence on these channels.
The
... Show More