Metaphor's Implication To The Teaching Of EFL

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) put forward the idea of conceptual metaphor, which signified that cognitive metaphor had taken hold. Metaphor is an indispensable mechanism for us to know the unknown world. Such characteristics of metaphor as to make difficult easy, complex simple, and to know the new in terms of the old as well as its vividness and interestingness are, more or less, related to the cognitive of psychology, psycholinguistics and the ultimate objectives of language teaching and learning. Therefore, metaphor, as a tool, can be put into teaching practice. Garndner (1983) put forward the theory of 'multiple intelligence'. He held that people vary in terms of eight types of intelligence. Littlemore (2001) argued that there is ninth kind of intelligence which was also likely to have an effect on language learning and teaching, namely 'metaphorical intelligence'. On the shoulders of these giants, I studied, explored and made some tentative experiment during which I use metaphor as a tool in teaching of EFL and tried to tap potentials of metaphorical intelligence in students. As the value of metaphorical teaching improves, it demands more from EFL teachers i.e. EFL teachers should know the images created by metaphors about English language, which are indispensable to teachers of EFL.