Idioms Research Articles

The Role of Language in the Social and Academic Functioning of Children With ADHD

Objective: To provide an in-depth examination of whether pragmatic, expressive, receptive, and narrative language are associated with the social and academic functioning of children with ADHD. Method: Children with ADHD (n = 46) and neurotypical comparison (NC) children (n = 40) aged 7 to 11 years completed tasks measuring expressive, receptive, and narrative language, while parents rated pragmatic language and social- and academic functioning. Results: Children with ADHD differed significantly from NC children on pragmatic language, expressive language, receptive language, and narrative coherence. An examination of indirect effects revealed that a significant proportion of the association between ADHD and social functioning was shared with pragmatic language, while a significant proportion of the association between ADHD and academic difficulties was shared with pragmatic language as well as with expressive language. Conclusion: This preliminary study supports the clinical relevance of language in relation to the academic- and social functioning of children with ADHD.

Reading Teaching under the Core Literacy of the English Discipline College

This article aims to explore reading instruction under the framework of core literacy. Core literacy refers to language ability, cultural character, thinking quality, and learning ability. Reading instruction is one of the important ways to cultivate students’ core literacy. Students need to read in order to understand different cultural backgrounds and values, broaden their horizons and knowledge. Students need to read in order to understand different cultural backgrounds and values, broaden their horizons and knowledge. At the same time, reading can also improve students' language expression and communication abilities, cultivating excellent cultural inheritors and cross-cultural communicators. At the same time, reading can also improve students' language expression and communication abilities, cultivating excellent cultural inheritors and cross cultural communicators. Reading instruction also needs to focus on developing students’ thinking literacy. Students need to use reading to develop critical thinking, creative thinking, and problem solving abilities. Students need to use reading to develop critical thinking, creative thinking, and problem solving abilities. Reading instruction should be closely integrated with core literacy, improving students’ comprehensive quality through developing their language ability, cultural character, thinking quality, and learning ability.

A Contrastive Analysis of the Connotations, Idiomaticity and Metaphoricity of Face in English and its Arabic Equivalent wədʒh

Objectives: This contrastive study aims to investigate the similarities and differences between the English term 'Face' and its Arabic equivalent, ‘‘wədʒh’, in terms of denotative meanings, connotative meanings, metaphorical meanings, and idiomatic uses. Methods: The data for this study were collected from a range of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, as well as electronic databases. Results: The analysis has revealed that the term "wədʒh" encompasses a broader spectrum of meanings in Arabic compared to the word "face" in English. This divergence likely stems from the distinct cultures and historical backgrounds of the two languages. It is also found that both terms can carry connotations related to identity, expression, and communication. 'Face' and ‘‘wədʒh’ both imply the surface representation of an individual through metonymy and are frequently associated with emotions, reactions, and social interactions. Moreover, both terms can be used metaphorically to convey a wide array of concepts. Conversely, the two terms have their distinct set of idiomatic expressions, cultural nuances, and colloquial usages specific to their respective languages. Conclusions: Collectively, the current study is of significant value because it contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of how body parts function as sources of linguistic creativity and cultural symbolism in social communication.

An Analysis of Idiomatic Expressions found in The Lightning Thief Song Lyrics

The title of this study is An Analysis of Idiomatic Expressions Found In “The Lightning Thief (Original Cast Recording)” Song Lyrics. The objective of this study is to analyze the existence of idioms inside of an existing work of literature in the form of songs as part of a musical play and what does the idiom classified as, specifically what set them apart from each other and what pattern made them classified as one type through their semantic side. This study also includes an analysis of idiomatic expressions in the form of idiom references as it is considered part of the character’s personal touch as part of a story. Through a qualitative research method, the writer gathers and analyzes each idiom that exists based on listed idioms of the fourth edition of Oxford Dictionary of Idioms by John Ayto to separate them into 3 idiom classifications made by Cacciari & Glucksberg in 1991 to those are Compositional Opaque, Compositional Transparent, and Quasi Metaphorical. Each type is sometimes difficult to classify, possibly due to the existence of either phrasal verbs or individual words that have multiple meanings.

Research on the Cultivation Strategy of Primary School Students' Mathematical Language Expression Ability

Learning mathematics is a process of learning mathematical language, which is the external manifestation of mathematical thinking, the carrier of mathematical knowledge and mathematical ideas and methods, and at the same time, mathematical knowledge also needs mathematical language as a medium to disseminate and communicate. In the study of mathematics, whether students can learn mathematics well is related to whether students have good mathematical language skills, but many studies can show that there are obvious deficiencies in the current mathematical language expression skills of primary school students. Therefore, teachers need to strengthen students' thinking training and good study habits, so as to further cultivate students' mathematical language expression ability and improve students' core literacy. To this end, this paper will elaborate on the concept and classification of mathematical language, as well as the cultivation strategies of primary school students' mathematical language expression ability.

Research on the Application of 5E Teaching Model in Senior English Writing Teaching

Writing, as a pivotal part of English language teaching, provides an important platform for cultivating students’ core competencies and reflects students’ comprehensive language application ability and language expression ability as well. With the reform of the new college entrance examination, the difficulty of the writing section has increased. Thus, how to adapt to the reform of the college entrance examination and explore new writing teaching methods has become a widely concerned issue among front-line high school teachers. Based on the analysis of the connotation and elements of the 5E teaching model, as well as the current situation of writing teaching, this study combines the 5E teaching model with writing teaching, aiming to explore new effective teaching models, promote reform of writing teaching, and improve the quality of writing teaching.

Figure and Ground in Katherine Mansfield’s “Bliss”: A Cognitive Reading

“Bliss” is a masterpiece of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories. This article aims to illustrate the prominence of figures and thematic ideas in “Bliss” and to explore its internal cognitive principles based on the figure-ground theory of cognitive poetics. In “Bliss”, the prominence of character, image and theme gives rise to the formation and reversal of “figure” and “ground” within the literary text. Through the conflict between different characters such as extramarital affair or triangle love, the focalization of various images like fire, moonlight and pear tree, and the alienation of narrative techniques and language expressions, for example, the third-person and psychological narratives, as well as the visual changes in color words, “Bliss” successfully achieves the prominence of literary figures, expresses the writer’s emotions and creative intentions, and deepens the connotations of the story’s themes. The prominence of “happy” and “unhappy” figures of the protagonist Bertha Young highlights the story’s grounds and themes: after years of happiness in marriage that may have turned into dreamy illusions, women must rely on their own strength to live independently, confidently, and strongly, correctly recognizing their identities in family, finding their positions in society, and living out brilliance and happiness in daily life.

Pidgin English proverbs as a source of structural nativization in Nigerian English

AbstractIn this paper, we explore the role of Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE) proverbs in language contact settings and their impact on the development of idiomatic phraseology in Nigerian English (NgE). In a set of 100 NPE proverbs, we identified lexical keywords that served as anchors for searches in the large‐scale Nairaland corpus to detect recurrent collocational patterns that in further proximity searches yielded frequent, lexico‐grammatically variable patterns that may be interpreted as innovations at the early stages of idiom formation. The findings suggest that cognitively motivated key lexical items of NPE proverbs may serve as a basis for the formation of variable but also lexico‐grammatically more condensed idiomatic expressions in NgE.

Measuring English Abilities of Junior High School Students

Students’ problems in learning English often stem from a lack of exposure to the language, insufficient practice opportunities, and challenges with grammar and vocabulary, which collectively hinder their overall proficiency and confidence. The purpose of this study is to measure students’ ability in mastering English. The method used in this study is a descriptive quantitative approach, conducted at SMP Negeri 3 Kuala Batee. The total number of participants was 27 students, and the data were collected using a test with 50 questions. The results of the study indicated that the students’ ability in mastering English was classified into high, moderate, and low categories. High abilities were evident in mastering main idea identification, understanding text purposes, and recognizing text types. Moderate abilities were observed in conversational skills, identifying supporting details in reading, pronoun reference, passive voice, and word meanings. Low abilities were noted in expressing congratulations and hope, understanding text structure and genres, conversations, simple past tense, comprehension of advertisements, word meanings, and using "to be" and pronouns. These findings suggest that while students have a good grasp of certain aspects of English, significant gaps remain, particularly in grammatical rules and expressive language. The students should learn more about English grammatical rules because this area was categorized into low ability, indicating a need for targeted instructional strategies to address these deficiencies and improve overall language proficiency.

Utilizing AI (Artificial Intelligence) to Have Positive Impacts on Students in Learning English

This research explored the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to positively impact on students in learning English. However, the study also recognized the potential negative impacts of AI, such as over-reliance on technology, reduced language expression and grammar proficiency. The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative research was to investigate how AI can be utilized to positively influence students in the context of English language learning. The research method involved collecting and analyzing first-hand experiences from students to understand the nuances of AI integration in English education. In this study, the researchers took second semester students of the English Education Study Program, University of Nias as participants. The research was conducted at the University of Nias. How to use AI to have a positive impact on students in learning English is by filtering the answers generated from AI.

Effects of Sensory-Motor Perception and Movement Trainings in 2-6 Years Old Children Having Developmental Problems on Development Area and Emotional and Behavioral Problems

This study aimed to examine the effects of sensory-motor perception and movement training on the developmental areas and emotional and behavioral problems of children with neurodevelopmental problems. The sensory-motor perception and movement training program applied in this work focused on the personal and social, fine and gross motor, receptive and expressive language, emotion, and behavior issues of 15 children aged 2 to 6 years consisting of nine children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, three children having Speech Disorder, and three children having General Development Delay. The program was applied for 18 weeks, six days a week and two hours per day, for a total of 216 hours. The Denver-II development scale and the Child Behavior Checklists (separately for ages of 2-3 and 4-6) were used to create the pretest-posttest design. Using these data, the positive impacts of training on development areas as well as emotional and behavioral issues were measured. According to the Wilcoxon signed-rank test results, children’s Denver-II development scale and its sub-dimensions’ scores after sensory-motor perception and movement training improved significantly (p<0.05). When the pretest and posttest averages of Child Behavior Checklist for children aged 2-3 and 4-6 were compared, internalizing, externalizing, and overall scores decreased significantly after sensory-motor perception and movement training (p<0.05). In conclusion, children with developmental problems aged 2 to 6 who received sensory-motor, perception, and movement training showed significant decrease in anxiety levels, significant reduction in aggressive and destructive behavior, and significant improvement in fine- and gross-motor abilities as well as language and social skills.

Parent training of early language facilitation skills: parent and child outcomes from a large-scale effectiveness study in a diverse clinical population

ABSTRACT This study examined the effectiveness of parent-led early language facilitation training via the Hanen® It Takes Two To Talk® (ITTT) (Pepper & Weitzman [2004]. It takes two to talk: A practical guide for parents of children with language delays. The Hanen Centre.) programme, within a large linguistically and demographically diverse community sample of early language-delayed children. Measures of expressive vocabulary, mean length of utterance (M3LU), and parent–child interaction were taken at multiple time-points, with change benchmarked against growth-curves for typical language maturation where possible. Significant improvements were evident pre–post intervention on all outcome measures regardless of linguistic or demographic diversity. Results indicated that gains in expressive vocabulary and M3LU were significantly greater than those predicted from age-matched typically developing children over the same time-period; M3LU in early language-delayed children was expedited to within estimated normal limits based on age. Gains in parent–child interaction were maintained at 3 months post-ITTT. These results point to the effectiveness of early language facilitation training in promoting expressive language and lasting improvements in parent–child interaction skills when implemented at scale within a demographically and linguistically diverse clinical referral group.

Dance matters: dancing in Tunisia

A Tunisian youth movement, Dancers Citizens South (DCS), founded on 31 May 2015, encourages young people to find agency in their communities by creating in music, dance, or theater. DCS invited an American choreographer to create a dance in a collaborative environment with nine young people addressing violence against women from 4–11 January 2023 in Tataouine, Tunisia. All but two of the young people were from the south of Tunisia where there is little dance to no dance, and if there is dance, it may be frowned upon due to sociocultural reasons. This article examines the process and ethics of creating a dance in a cross-cultural context where for the most part, both the verbal and movement languages were not shared. Using an autoethnographic approach, the choreographer chronicles the process through discussions, research, the sharing of cultural dance (Martha Graham, breakdancing, Tunisian folk songs and dances), improvisations, and the creation and performance of the piece. Through these exchanges, it is argued that the collaboration encouraged levels of understanding and feeling that went beyond the surface interactions of everyday life and learned choreography because these exchanges required new choreography, and thus new connections. Even though the dancers and the choreographer came from different artistic and pedagogic practices, they aspired towards a kind of ‘hybridised aesthetic’ (Mitra 2015, xiii), blending cultural references in the body, realizing what they created was unique to them coming together.

The Influence of Using Big Book Learning Media on the Expressive Language Skills of 5-6 Year Old Children at TK Nusa Makassar

This study aims to determine the influence of Big Book learning media on the expressive language ability of 5-6 year old children at TK Nusa. The research approach used was quantitative with a Quasi Experimental Design. The population in this study was group B aged 5-6 years at TK Nusa Makassar, totaling 48 children. Purposive sampling technique was used to select a sample of 20 children from group B, with 10 children in the experimental group and 10 children in the control group. Data collection techniques included observation, tests, and documentation. Data analysis techniques used were descriptive statistical analysis and non-parametric analysis using Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test version 26. Based on the research results, it can be concluded that the expressive language ability of children treated with Big Book learning media in the experimental group was better compared to the control group. The average increase in the experimental group was 22.20, while in the control group it was 15.20. The test results showed Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) 0.005 < 0.05, hence H0 was rejected and H1 was accepted. Therefore, it can be concluded that there is an influence of Big Book learning media on the expressive language ability of 5-6 year old children at TK Nusa Makassar.

Netflix English subtitling of idioms in Egyptian movies: challenges and strategies

Recently, subtitles in different languages have become more available and accessible, thanks to streaming platforms like Netflix, which provide viewers with multiple language choices, including Arabic and English. This study examines the strategies of subtitling Egyptian phraseological units, particularly idioms, into English. The parallel corpus of data under examination consists of two Egyptian movies, namely, “The Great Chinese Beans” and “The Humans and the Mongoose”. Following Baker’s taxonomy of translation strategies, the analysis showed that the examined idioms were predominantly translated through cultural substitution. The analysis also showed that there were instances of erroneous literal translation. Furthermore, several cases of mistranslation were identified, which could be attributed to a potential lack of understanding of the nuances and subtleties of the source and target cultures, as well as limitations and difficulties in finding appropriate equivalents. This study may hold significance for translation practitioners and scholars, specifically those focusing on subtitling, cultural translation, and the translation of idiomatic expressions.

Effectiveness of Use PEAK Program in Developing Language Skills with Autism Spectrum Disorder Children in Oman

The study aimed to reveal the effectiveness of the promoting emergence of advanced knowledge programs in developing language skills among a sample of children with an autism spectrum disorder in Oman. The study adopted the pre-experimental approach of the single experimental group with two pre- and post-measurements. 10 children with autism spectrum disorder (speakers) from (5-8) years and good mental ability were used and selected to achieve the objectives of the study. PEAK program was used and a scale for language skills was developed that consisted of (34) items distributed over two dimensions (receptive and expressive language). The validity and stability of the study tool was verified. The results of the current study showed that there were significant differences at (α = 0.05) level in favor of the post and follow-up application in the average performance of autism spectrum disorder children on the scale of language skills (receptive and expressive) attributable to the promoting emergence of advanced knowledge. The study recommended the preparation of periodic meetings and workshops for workers in the field of special education and autism spectrum disorder children in the Sultanate of Oman to learn how to employ the PEAK program in dealing with this group of children in Oman.

The Aesthetic Experience of Dance Art Under the Perspective of Body Aesthetics

Dance art, with its unique body language and aesthetic expression, has become an important part of human culture. Body aesthetics plays a key role in the art of dance. Through the movements, gestures and expressions of the dancers, the aesthetic concept is visualized, bringing both visual and psychological enjoyment. This paper will discuss the relationship between body aesthetics and dance art, analyze the multi-dimensional characteristics of dance aesthetic experience, and show the unique charm and cultural connotation of dance art through the contrast of classical dance works and different dance styles.

Translating Idioms in Political Discourse: Translation Strategies and Semantic Categories

This study examines the Arabic translation of 165 English idiomatic expressions in political interviews in terms of Baker’s translation strategies (2018) and investigates the deployment of idiomatic expressions in terms of semantic category based on Fernando (1996) and Kovacs (2016). The corpus of the study consists of 17 political interviews conducted in English by King Abdullah II from 2013 to 2023 and translated officially into Arabic. The results show that the paraphrasing strategy accounts for more than half the data (56.36%), followed by the strategies of ‘similar meaning but different form’ (23.63%) and ‘similar meaning and form’ (15.15%), while the omission strategy comes last at (4.84%). The analysis indicates that although the overall quality of the translation is acceptable, there are a few cases where the emotiveness of the idiomatic expressions and the appropriate genericity are underestimated. In terms of semantic category, the results reveal that the degree of opaqueness/transparency is a determining factor for choosing the translation strategy, viz., the paraphrasing strategy accounts for (82.69%) in translating opaque/semi-opaque idiomatic expressions against only (27.69%) in transparent/semi-transparent ones. The study concludes that much attention should be paid to the sensitive nature of the degree of emotiveness in idioms and the relevant generic constraints

Contextual Ambiguity Framework for Enhanced Sentiment Analysis

Negation is a universal linguistic phenomenon that affects the performance of Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications, especially opinion mining data. Many words exists in sentences that have multiple interpretations or sentiments depending on how they are placed with respect to the negation word in the sentence. A cutting-edge framework is designed to tackle the nuanced challenge of detecting contextual ambiguity through negation in sentiment analysis. The approach uniquely combines advanced natural language processing techniques with deep linguistic insights, enabling the accurate interpretation of sentiment in complex sentences where negation plays a key role. The framework identifies negation cues and their scope, then assesses their impact on sentiment, considering contextual dependencies and word semantics. The model's innovation lies in context-sensitive algorithms that adeptly handle different sentence structures and idiomatic expressions, a notable advancement over traditional sentiment analysis tools. Particularly effective in interpreting sarcastic or ironic statements, the framework significantly outperforms existing models in accuracy, especially in negation-heavy contexts. This advancement enhances sentiment analysis applications like social media monitoring and customer feedback analysis, offering a more nuanced understanding of public opinion.

Proyectar la imaginación. La influencia de las imágenes en red en la fase de prediseño en comunicación gráfica

Graphic communication projects begin with a strategic phase whose objective is to conceptualize a sensory universe that will be associated with the product or brand for which the project is developed. The objective is to emotionally connect the brand or product with the user. In this process, the "performativity" potential of images is used to define and communicate complex emotional qualities that are difficult to express through verbal language. Mostly, images are searched on the Internet and classified through hegemonic iconographic and iconological patterns. This article proposes to activate a critical look at the hybrid co-creation process that is generated between human and machine in the search for images on the net. Analyzing the agency of the non-human in this procedure will allow us to establish if the creative and methodological processes used contribute to establish and perpetuate a prevailing visual hegemony, or if they help to open fissures in its structure.