Raising Metaphor Awareness: An Investigation Of EFL Students

From Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, to Richards, R. Jacobson, the linguists in modern history, from a figurative speech to a way that people think and behave, metaphor, with its own magic, has drawn great attention from a large number of scholars over the world. With the publication of the well-known linguistic book Metaphors We Live By (1980) by G. Lakoff &M. Johnson, metaphor theory has been presented to people who work on cognitive linguistics in a more systematic and scientific manner. According to Lakoff and Johnson, the essence of a metaphor is "understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another (1980,5)" As a way of thinking and understanding the world, consequently, the metaphor theory is important and imperative in the teaching and learning process which helps students learn and try to use a new language and culture. In fact, the essence of learning a new language is to acquire a novel understanding or experience. However, although metaphor theory has been extensively studied in the foreign countries, it has not drawn enough attention from people in a considerable way in China until about twenty years ago. Although the focus of metaphor theory research at home has surpassed the stage of mere introduction to international metaphor theory study and development to the level of research of metaphor theoretical applications, the empirical studies are still trials which have not made the research profound and effective enough. Therefore, little progress has been achieved in discussion of the applications of the theory in different fields. Do the students have metaphor awareness? What are their opinions of metaphor? In what ways can we enhance their metaphor awareness effectively, in order to assist their study of metaphors?In the quest to the answers of these questions, I have conducted a comparative study on second-year EFL (English as a foreign language) students from two classes in a university in China, researched their metaphor awareness, found out their current ability of recognizing metaphors, tested the ways to improve their metaphor consciousness, and finally proposed some constructive suggestions to better the metaphor awareness of students, in order to promote their metaphorical comprehension ability and language learning ability. This thesis first briefly introduces the background of the research as well as its methodology and outcomes. In the first chapter, the literature review is documented, consisting of three parts—1) metaphor theory introduction, including the origin and development of metaphor theory, main metaphor perspectives, types, and functions; 2) the current situation of metaphor theory and English teaching, emphasizing the assertion of significance of metaphor theory in English teaching and the robustness of the research; and 3) metaphor awareness. The following second chapter is an important part of the thesis, which details the real case study of metaphor awareness of EFL students in China. This part mainly introduces the purpose, objectives, hypothesis, material, procedure and data collection and analysis methodology of the research. In the research, two classes of English major students were chosen randomly and tested carefully for one semester. A pre-test and a post-test which examined the metaphor awareness of students were conducted. After the pretest, besides normal teaching and knowledge acquisition, students in the experimental class received regular metaphor-relevant information, whilst those in the control class were only exposed to normal teaching and knowledge acquisition. After the implementation of this comparative teaching mode for one term, a post-test was carried out to evaluate if there was any significant change of their metaphor awareness. The third chapter, which analyzes the figures of the research and does some discussion, is the core of the whole thesis. Through the comparative analysis of different metaphor awareness of students in the pre and post tests, the following findings were noted:1. China's EFL students' current metaphor awareness is weak;2. There is a distinction in students' metaphor awareness when they are faced with different types of metaphors;3. Students' metaphor awareness can be improved, therefore, in English teaching, teachers should adopt effective methods to improve the metaphor awareness of students, thus achieve the aim of improving their English language ability.Based on the study outcomes, this thesis elaborates on the inspirational aspects of English teaching. Finally, a general summary of the study is made, the major findings are restated, its shortcomings and the future study possibilities are suggested.This real case study on EFL students' metaphor awareness is a worthwhile attempt in the discussion of the function of metaphor theory in English teaching. The findings on the current situation of the students' metaphor theory and the proposed strategies for improving their metaphor awareness is of benefit to further research of metaphor and English teaching in China.