Cognitive Metaphor And EFL Learners' Vocabulary Ability

Since vocabulary acquisition has constituted and will be a stumbling block for language learners, the lexical studies have become a heated research subject for language researchers and educators since the 1970s. Since theories in the field of linguistics alone are not sufficient to address this issue successfully, this research attempts to apply the theoretical findings of cognitive metaphor to the investigation of EFL learners' vocabulary ability, including learners' assigning ability and reasoning in terms of the tested English vocabulary items. Since vocabulary ability is an abstract concept, the present research examines EFL learners' vocabulary ability from the following aspects: learners' comprehension, retention and even production concerning the tested English vocabulary items in order to prove whether metaphorical cognition could help EFL learners cultivate and improve their vocabulary ability in a micro sense.The present research attempts to investigate and analyze the relationship between metaphorical cognition and EFL learners' vocabulary ability. The research set out to investigate two main issues: (i) whether the integration of theoretical findings of cognitive metaphor into English vocabulary teaching could help cultivate and improve EFL learners' vocabulary ability; (ii) From the qualitative perspective, whether and how three major cognitive metaphorical factors, such as metaphorical reasoning, mapping and a cognitive psychological process could help cultivate and improve EFL learners' vocabulary ability? In order to answer these two research questions, the researcher put forward the following hypothesis: The integration of theoretical findings of cognitive metaphor into English vocabulary teaching, namely metaphorical cognition can help cultivate and improve EFL learners' vocabulary ability.