Metaphorical Competence And Foreign Language Teaching

The notion of communicative competence has been widely accepted and the communicative approach has done great contributions to language teaching. Yet in the actual speech samples produced by foreign language learners, there still seems to be something that goes beyond grammatical and communicative proficiency. With the birth and development of cognitive linguistics in recent years, more and more attention has been paid to how language operates in people's mind, It has been found that people's conceptual system, which functions in the progress of human cognition, is metaphorical. It is the impetus of language development and mechanism of language formation. Based on the contemporary metaphor theory, this thesis is meant to prove that metaphor is an intrinsic feature of not only cognition but also language. Linguistic competence, communicative competence and metaphorical competence are three interdependent and complementary components of language teaching. Suggestions concerning metaphorical competence and foreign language teaching are as follows:a. Culture teaching is not merely the transmission of information. It should be closely connected with the native speakers' fundamental way of cutting and categorizing the world. Special attention can be paid to their peculiar mode of thinking.b. Metaphors are scattered in the language system, although they may or may not be construed by language users. Since root metaphors have a unique place in the formation of languages, the awareness of root metaphors can help learners in learning a language. By tracing back to their origins, and comparing them with the mother tongue root metaphors, the learning process can be sped up and learners' competencies improved.c. When students use target language to express their native language concepts, their texts often manifest an asymmetry between language form and conceptual content. The learning of isolated language points is not of much help in this respect. By following the above two suggestions, learners can acquire more native-like conceptual fluency.