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.
World War II has brought suffering for all people; it has led people to have a nostalgic feeling. The war has many faces all of them are ugly, like death, separation, loneliness, violence, crime, betrayal, and disconnection and many other meanings. Michael Ondaatje in his novel The English Patient (1992) portrays a picture of the effect of World War II on four different characters; Hana a Canadian nurse, The English patient who is Hungarian, Caravaggio a Canadian-Italitan thief, and Kip an Indian sapper. They live together in one house, share their secrets and memories about World War II. Ondaatje brings them together to reveal their secrets and to heal their wounds of the war experience.
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This research focuses on the contemporary geostrategic transformations that afflicted the countries of the Middle East, with a focus on the countries of the Arab East, after the collapse of the system of international relations, and the emergence of the unipolar system led by the United States of America. After the events of September 11 and the events that followed, especially the occupation of Iraq in 2003, the study area witnessed a group of geopolitical variables and the emergence of dangerous phenomena that threatened the state structure in the countries of the Middle East; the most notably are the phenomenon of terrorism, cross-border armed groups, sectarian polarization, the phenomenon of migration and the internal and the externa
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Characterized the Middle East has geographic, economic, and geostrategic peculiarities, but it suffers from many problems, such as disagreement over what it means as a concept, or what it represents of a geographic extension. The question is related to the ambiguity surrounding the concept of the Middle East? The purpose of its launch? As it relates to its geostrategic, economic, and geo-cultural importance? And manifestations of this importance? And to what extent he retained his value in the strategies of the major powers? Research hypotheses:
-The multiplicity of concepts for the Middle East region, with international political and Geostrategic interests.- The geostrategic value of the Middle East has made it a focal point for
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Collapsible soil has a metastable structure that experiences a large reduction in volume or collapse when wetting. The characteristics of collapsible soil contribute to different problems for infrastructures constructed on its such as cracks and excessive settlement found in buildings, railways channels, bridges, and roads. This paper aims to provide an art review on collapse soil behavior all over the world, type of collapse soil, identification of collapse potential, and factors that affect collapsibility soil. As urban grow in several parts of the world, the collapsible soil will have more get to the water. As a result, there will be an increase in the number of wetting collapse problems, so it's very important to com
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The aim of the research is to design educational software based on Web Quests and to measure its effectiveness in developing information search skills of students at the Department of Educational and Psychological Sciences. The research is experimental in nature using pre-post measurement. The research sample consisted of (91) male and female students from the second grade in the Department of Educational and Psychological Sciences, they were divided into two equal groups; the experimental group consisted of (47) students who adopted the educational software as a studying method, and the control group consisted of (44) students who follow the traditional method. The researchers prepared a list of skills for searching information and they
... Show MoreThe sunna has the great effect in building the Islamic civilization, and the formulation of the Islamic thinking. It worked at spreading of soicinces at every district of Islam. The purified sunna represent one of the main monuments of Islam after Quran in clarifying the basics of the human intercommunication, and the divine reality. It comes as an explanation to the myertious accounts in the shariaa and sunna that it has begun to form an intellectual depth of the Mulsims' life. The importance ofsunna is it is the second source of legislation in Islamic after the holt Quran. It comes only to affirm what have been mentioned already in theHoly Quran, or clarifying what is not clear in the Quran.
This research tackles the semantic function of colors in the poetry of Gada Al Samman, in the introduction the research explores the difference in the semantic colors for people and the function of these colors in arising the feelings for the human spirit and its influence on that spirit. The research tackles the poems of this poetess that are full of symbolic colors that convey positive and negative meanings related to the poetess herself. In addition the research shows the functions of colors in her poetry through the compatibility of colors by employing colors in her poetry in terms of compatibility with the vision of community to denote colors. Beside using the function of colors contrast by employing the colors in different meaning
... Show Morewealth which has, as well as the factors which entered the national consciousness of thousands of the continent 2. has not been possible to continue the national resistance in Namibia means spontaneous first and in light of the factors of national awareness of the new has taken sweeping the continent during the interwar period in the thirties and forties of the last century, marked by the return of a lot of educated Africans who have received their education in the countries of Western Europe, where traders who looktoa life of freedomenjoyed bythe people ofWaldo.. As well as awareness of labor represented by the working class and the work of strikes and mass anti-exploitation, which was subjected to factor in the region in wages and lack
... Show MoreThe role of kindergarten in the development of moral values of children" The child moral education in institutions of basic education considered as the priority of values and social goals of methodical education , and consideringto how the child be in the kindergarten of susceptibility to absorb and configuration and modification of experiences, thus the kindergartens are important because of their influence in the formation of his character through reincarnation of the personality of those who manage education and try to imitate their values and attitudes and standards of right and wrong. This is also happen through his exercise of educational activities until he has moral insight which enables him to distinguish between good and evil b
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