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.
KE Sharquie, JR Al-Rawi, AA Noaimi, MM Jabir, Iraqi Postgraduate Medical Journal, 2009
S Khalifa E, AR Jamal R, N Adil A, J Munqithe M…, 2009
This study examines the validity of e-poetry as an acceptable literary genre. The
thematic, stylistic and esthetic features of a selected number of e-poems produced by
poetry generators are analyzed for this purpose. The e-poems are then compared with a
number of works written by Dada poets in order to establish the literary merit of the
former.
The people lived under Mamluk rule, distress, poverty, famines, oppression of princes, rulers, And their domination and he always wished for a just ruler to relieve his misery, and remove the injustice
from him, so they found in Al-Nasser Mohammed tend to establish justice.
When Al-Nasser ascended the throne of the Sultanate, there was a rise or fall in prices, so he pursued Prices will end and punish those
who come out for it. And you talk about this search for a relationship
Sultan Al-Nasser with the poor classes in society and his keenness to pursue their affairs was compassionate On them, mer
... Show MoreThis study aims to design unified electronic information system to manage students attendance in Lebanese French university/Erbil, as a system that simplifies the process of entering and counting the students absence, and generate absence reports to expel students who passed the acceptable limit of being absent, and by that we can replace the traditional way of using papers to count absence, with a complete electronically system for managing students attendance, in a way that makes the results accurate and unchangeable by the students.
In order to achieve the study's objectives, we designed an information syst
... Show MoreThere are many studies that discussed the famous museum's graveyards in the Islamic worlds, to study the lives of these figures, there are many difficulties for their studies because the first we need the regularity and history information, and many sciences support, such as in language, geography information.
I am studying the research from Maraqid Al-Maaraf book by Harz Aldeen, the book has large members about the persons have graved in Persian Country in the middle ages, there are more than (30) figures in my study, I have studied every figure in this research depending on the sources and references books.
Background :Infectious disorders in general have high morbidity and mortality.. CNS infections include many disorders like bacterial meningitis, tuberculous and other subacute and chronic meningitis, viral meningitis, cerebral abscess, spinal cord infections, and others.
Objective: To assess our locality about prevalence of CNS infections , to have more awareness regarding CNS infections, and to try to find the proper way to reduce their prevalence and to treat them in appropriate way.
Method :We revised the records of all the cases of CNS infections excluding cases of spinal cord infections who were admitted in the wards of neuroscience hospital over the previous two years ( from July/2010 to June 2012 ),those were 132 cases.Seaso
In this paper, chip and powder copper are used as reinforcing phase in polyester matrix to form composites. Mechanical properties such as flexural strength and impact test of polymer reinforcement copper (powder and chip) were done, the maximum flexural strength for the polymer reinforcement with copper (powder and chip) are (85.13 Mpa) and (50.08 Mpa) respectively was obtained, while the maximum observation energy of the impact test for the polymer reinforcement with copper (powder and chip) are (0.85 J) and (0.4 J) respectively
The research aims at the scholars’attention to the importance and role of Arab Muslim women through books and historical studies that historians and scholars have taken up like Ibn Al-Jawzi (597 AH) and his book Safwat Al-Safwa, where he presented the conduct of worship and their words and deeds, and explained to women worshipers other aspects of their lives, such as the scientific aspect Crafts and works as well as their prominent role in preaching and religious guidance, and the impact of this on their morals and qualities. This study showed the strength of the personality of women and their high interest in worship. The importance of the study lies in knowledge.The research followed the role of Muslim women to carry t
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