The Effect Of Senior High School Students’ Metaphoric Competence On Their English Writing Scores

English writing is a core skill in English teaching.Metaphor,as a universal cognitive mechanism and way of thinking,is essential in understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another and plays a significant role in language learning.It provides a new insight into the study of English writing teaching;therefore,exploring the influence of metaphoric competence on English writing performance can facilitate students’English writing.With 205 high school students from a middle school in Fujian Province as the research subjects,this study adopted the metaphoric competence test as the research tool,and employed the methods of questionnaire surveying and statistical analysis.This study attempted to explore three questions:1)How is the metaphoric competence of high school students（including the ability to discover the meaning of metaphors,the ability to explain metaphors fluently,and the ability to produce metaphors）?2)What are the correlations between metaphoric competence and its various dimensions related to the English writing performance of high school students?3)To what extent do metaphoric competence and its various dimensions affect English writing performance?The author selected 4 students from the high score,middle score,and low score of the questionnaire respectively,12 in total,and 4English teachers according to different levels of teaching age,professional title,etc.for an interview.The results show that:1)The average score of high school students’metaphoric competence is 61.11,indicating that the overall level is not ideal.The ability to discover metaphoric meaning averages at 25.04（full score:35）,which is 71.54 on a hundred-point scale.The ability to interpret metaphors fluently averages 20.05,which means that students can give an average of 2.01 reasonable explanations for each target sentence.The mean score of the ability to produce metaphors is 16.02,which means students can produce 8.01metaphors on average.2)There is a moderately positive correlation between metaphoric competence and English writing performance（r=0.669）.The three dimensions of metaphoric competence are all positively correlated with English writing performance（r=0.421,0.515,0.564）.3)Metaphoric competence has a positive bearing on English writing performance（English writing score=9.070+0.121×metaphoric competence）.The three-dimensional degree of metaphoric competence also plays a positive role in predicting English writing performance.The multiple regression equation can be represented as:English writing score=9.658+0.062×M₁+0.137×M₂+0.156×M₃（M₁represents the ability to discover metaphor meaning,M₂the ability to interpret metaphors fluently,and M₃the ability to produce metaphors）.Based on those findings,this study combines metaphoric competence with English writing teaching,and tentatively puts forward some teaching suggestions,such as imparting metaphorical knowledge,comparing metaphorical culture and combining writing teaching and metaphoric competence training.It is hoped that the improvement of metaphoric competence can develop students’English writing performance.