| Cognitive linguists have pointed out that metaphor is the basic means of human life,and that the everyday conceptual system we rely on to think and act is fundamentally metaphoric.Metaphor is not only the basic means for thinking and cognition,but also the necessary elements of language and culture.Hence,we have reasons to believe that metaphorical competence(MC)is also an organic component of language competence and cultural literacy,thus in learning whatever language,the existence of metaphors in it and the cultivation of MC should never be ignored.Researches on metaphor have had a long history ever since the ancient time and have hardly ever declined.However,until the 1980 s,researches on metaphor had mainly focused on theoretical studies,and empirical studies about MC had not yet been put on agenda.Since the 1980 s,with the rising and development of the theoretical and empirical studies of second language acquisition,MC has gradually caught people's attention,and the first decade of the new century had witnessed a research climax.Despite this,compared with the traditional focuses on language competence or communicative competence,MC has still not yet received its due attention.Especially after the year 2015,with limited number and influence of literatures,studies on MC seem to have fallen back again.Generally speaking,MC mainly consists of such aspects as metaphor identification,comprehension,interpretation,evaluation and production.While most domestic researches on MC focus on comprehension and interpretation,the key item that can most directly reflect a learner's MC would be his ability in producing metaphors.Existing literatures on metaphor production indicate that most EFL learners' metaphor production competence(MPC)is far from satisfactory compared to their competence in comprehension or interpretation.As Bai Juyi,the great poet in Tang Dynasty,once put it,a good eliminator seeks the origin of misfortunes,and a good doctor cuts the source of diseases.Hence an investigation into Chinese EFL learners' MPC will be the starting point for the current study,and an exploration of the potential hindrances will be the core objective of this study.The present study will be guided by three major research questions listed below:1.What is the general situation of Chinese EFL learners' MPC?2.What is their MPC of mother tongue like? Are there any connections and differentiations between their mother tongue and English MPC?3.What are the potential hindrances to the development of Chinese EFL learner's MPC? And what might be the causes for these hindrances?Regarding question 1,210 TEM-8 writing texts were selected from the Corpus for English Majors(CEM),and all possible metaphor units were picked out and labeled by following the Metaphor Identification Procedure.Then both overall occurrences and average occurrences of metaphors were calculated.Regarding question 2,9 senior English majors were selected as subjects for a miniexperiment,in which the 9 subjects were asked to write both a Chinese and an English essay on the same topic.Metaphor occurrences in both essays of each subject were compared,so as to find out the connections and differentiations between their mother tongue and English MPC.Regarding question 3,an interview with the 9 subjects was conducted after the writing experiment.Both findings of the experiment and the interview helped probe into the major hindrances,as well as their causes.Based on the data comparison and analysis of the corpus samples,the author reports the following major findings:1.Samples from both higher mark group and lower mark group have displayed very low frequency of occurrences of both direct metaphors and explicit metaphors.There is no significant difference between the two groups of samples.2.As far as implied metaphors are concerned,among the five specific types of which,four(namely nominal,verbal,adjective and idiomatic metaphors)have displayed extremely significant difference between the two groups,which indicates that the occurrence of implied metaphors is significantly correlated with students' marks of writing;3.The average occurrence of all types of metaphors surveyed remains at a very low level,which is far below the average passage occurrence identified by several authoritative scholars abroad.Based on the writing experiment and the interview,the author found out some major hindrances listed below:1.The differences in ways of thinking restrict Chinese EFL learners from understanding and accepting English metaphors,thus obstructing smoothness of thinking in their English writing.2.An inadequacy of interaction with the target culture blocks learners' complete acquisition or mastering of the target metaphorical language.3.Learners' limited target language competence compels them to take the risk-avoidance strategy,and their first choices are often grammatical correctness and lexical appropriateness.4.Because of mother tongue transfer and interference,the metaphors produced by Chinese EFL learners often display distinct characteristics of the interlanguage.5.Learners' lack of metaphorical knowledge and input are closely related to such factors as teachers' metaphor output in class,their emphasis on metaphors,their metaphorical literacy,as well as the proportion of metaphors in textbooks and various testing materials.6.The low or unspecific requirements for metaphorical competence in English Testing Syllabuses have caused insufficient stress or even neglect of metaphor teaching and learning.Starting with an investigation on the MPC of Chinese EFL learners,this study focuses on probing into the major hindrances,as well as the causes,to the development of their MPC.Based on his findings,the author advocates an implementation of metaphor integration strategy in English teaching,which will start from the development of teachers' metaphorical literacy and the cultivation of learners' metaphorical awareness.Hopefully,the current study will raise the Chinese teachers' awareness of the importance of English metaphor teaching and that more studies in this field will be conducted in future. |
PDF Full Text Request