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.
This study is dedicated to one of the most difficult topics in Russian - this is the science of idioms. A feature of the Russian speech application in recent decades has been the effective change in the lexical composition of the Russian language. This article illustrates the semantic, grammatical and stylistic structural characteristics of the linguistic units that appeared in Russian at the end of the 20th century - the beginning of the twenty-first century. This work defines these terms : terminology, linguistic unity, and terms that are used as synonyms. In this research , we will adhere to the conciliatory view of the problem and include not only the terminology in the language units, but also the terminological compositions, saying
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The research has been based on two main variables (information and communication technology) and the quality of blended education (physical and electronic), aiming to reveal the relationship between four dimensions (physical devices, software, databases, communication networks) and the elements of education represented by (the teacher, the student, the teaching process, curriculum). The methodology and post-analysis-based research were conducted at the Technical College of Management / Baghdad through polling the opinions of a random sample that included (80) teachers out of (86) and the number of students (276) representing a random sample from all departments of the college (for the morning study) out of (3500) stud
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Resumen:
El horóscopo que es una predicción deducida de la posición de los astros del sistema solar y de los signos de Zodiaco, intenta no sólo predecir el futuro, sino también influir en el comportamiento del lector, orientándolo para que actúe adecuadamente y la invitación a actuar ante ese futuro que se aconseja mediante imperativos, perífrasis y otros recursos lingüísticos. Los horóscopos se caracterizan por su gran popularidad que existen en periódico o revista en columnas enteras dedicadas al tema, en donde se detallan la influencia que tendrá el día o el mes de cada uno de los signos correspondientes al zodíaco, siempre teniendo en cuenta la posici
... Show MoreThe objective of this study is to analyze the difficulties faced by intermediate-level Iraqi students in the use of Spanish unstressed pronouns as a foreign language (ELE). Through a mixed methodology, a descriptive and explanatory analysis was conducted based on written and oral productions of B1-level students at the University of Baghdad.The results show that factors such as interference from the native language (Arabic) and English, as well as grammatical differences between Spanish and Arabic, generate difficulties in the correct use of unstressed pronouns. A contrastive teaching approach is proposed that takes advantage of students' cognitive abilities to highlight similarities and differences between both languages.This stu
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First: the problem of research and its importance
The teacher's success in facilitating the students' learning and growth according to the educational and educational goals set out, he must identify the problems of discipline of students in the classroom in terms of sources and reasons and types and methods of prevention and treatment and the teacher to remember that success in his teaching and instruction is not completed more fully once he has the information And knowledge of the subject of the lesson, but must understand the dynamics of the group (class group) and master the skills of classroom management, su
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The purpose of this study is testing the effect of orgnizational learning in orgnizational Effectivness an applied study in Al-hiqma Jordinan Medecine Company . study sosiety 88 manegers sleect 80 of them .study used SPSS to test the hypothesis.study reachs to significant conculctions
The present research aims at identifying the educational problems and psychological problems of distinguished students at the intermediate level. The research sample consists of (246) students who are randomly selected from four distinguished schools (2) in the Karkh\1 and (2) in the Rusafa\2.
The researcher has constructed two scales for measuring the educational and psychological problems. She ensures the psychometric characteristics of the two scales. Alph-Cronbach and test-retest methodsare used to ensure reliability. Some statistical treatments are used to find out the aims of research. These treatments include the one-sample T-test, two independent samples T-test, and the Pearson correlation coefficient. The results show th
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Arabian Political Regimes: Problems of Policies and Rule; An Introduction to Interpreting (The Arabian Spring) The Arab Region witnessed, since 2011, critical changes overthrew a group of Arab regimes in some of its countries, and the reaction of these changes are still going on up to now. These changes were given lots of justifications and interpretations. The current study tries to concentrate on the most important problems which were due to what was known as (The Arab Spring). The study proposes that the crisis which the countries of the area are exposed to is not spontaneous in many of its aspects. It is totally a crisis of rule and policies. Because it is a reflection of the nature of authority in the Arabian regimes on the one hand
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