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.
The structural properties of ternary chalcopyrite AgAlSe2 compound alloys and thin films that prepared by the thermal evaporation method at room temperature on glass substrate with a deposition rate (5±0.1) nm s-1 for different values of thickness (250,500 and 750±20) nm, have been studied, using X-ray diffraction technology. As well as, the optical properties of the prepared films have been investigated. The structural investigated shows that the alloy has polycrystalline structure of tetragonal type with preferential orientation (112), while the films have amorphous structure. Optical measurement shows that AgAlSe2 films have high absorption in the range of wavelength (350-700 nm). The optical energy gap for allowed direct transition we
... Show MoreIn this work ester derivatives were synthesized by the reaction of imidazole derivatives (C1) with ethylchloroacetate in ethanol and NaOH to give the corresponding (C2) .While compound (C3) acetohydrazide was synthesized by the reaction of ester derivatives (C2) with hydrazine hydrat in ethanol. Compound (C3) from the reaction with different aromatic aldehydes in absolute ethanol gave the Schiff′s bases (C4,C5). The product compounds were characterized by FT-IR, U.V and 1HNMR spectra and the biological activities were studied as antibacterial.
The Bi2Se3 compound was synthesis by fusing initial compounds consisting of
extra pure elements in stoichiometric ratio from elements compound, charged inside
quartz ampoule. The crystal growth of Bi2Se3 carried out using Brighaman technique
process from melting f (Bi+Se ) at temperature of 810 ºC for about 48 hrs. Single crystal
of Bi2Se3 has been grown in direction (211) after slow cooling on account of heat
gradient to zone furnaces at cooling rate (1-3) C/hr. The structure study of the compound
was determined by x-ray diffraction technique, which it has bismuthinite structure and
orthorhombic unit cell with lattice parameters of a=10.2678 Å, b=11.2392 Å and
c=5.1737 Å
We have investigated the photoemission and electronic properties at the PTCDI molecules interface on TiO2 and ZnO semiconductor by means of charge transition. A simple donor acceptor scenario used to calculate the rate for electron transfer of delocalized electronics in a non-degenerately TiO2 and ZnO electrodes to redox localized acceptors in an electrolytic. The dependent of electronic transition rate on the potential at contact of PTCDI with TiO2 and ZnO semiconductors, it has been discussion using TiO2 and ZnO electrodes in aqueous solutions. The charge transfer rate is determining by the overlapping electronic coupling to the TiO2 and ZnO electrodes, the transition energy, potential and polarity media within the theoretical scenario of
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The performance of a condenser in a domestic refrigerator system without wires and a condenser with a novel design consisted of number of loops as elliptical shape is investigated experimentally in this work. The experiment was conducted with a refrigerator designed to work with HFC134a, under no load and with loads of (1.5,3 and 12 liters of water). In particular, the effects of shape change of the condenser were very important in heat transfer enhancement and reduce of the frictional loss as a result of reducing the pressure drop in the condenser. The results shown that compressor work decreases with elliptical condenser about (8.6% to 11.3%), and then the power consumption decreases also. The performance of household refrigerator with
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Porosity and pore structure are important characteristics of pharmaceutical tablets, since they influence the physical properties, such as mechanical strength, density and disintegration time. This paper is an attempt to investigate the pore structure of four different paracetamol tablets based on mercury porosimetry. The intrusion volumes of mercury were used to calculate the pore diameter, pore volume and pore size distribution. The result obtained indicate that the variation of the pore volume in the tablets followed the sequence:- S.D.I. Iraq? Pharmacare,Dubai-U.A.E.? Bron and Burk(UK) London?Lark Laboratories(India), while the variation of surface area followed the sequence:- S.D.I. Iraq? Lark Laboratories(India)? Pharmacare,Dubai-U.A
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