| The research of metaphor can be traced back to Aristotle's period. After experiencing the rhetorical study, the semantic study, metaphor study embraced its multidisciplinary study period and focused on the cognitive study of metaphor. Four syncronic research models came into being during different phases, including the rhetoric metaphor, the linguistic metaphor, the poetic metaphor and the philosophical metaphor. Metaphor is regarded as a figurative method and a departure from the traditional point of view. The traditional school is represented and characterized by Aristotle and Quintilian. The cognitive school, represented by Lakoff, regards metaphor as a thinking method, and holds that metaphor is the external form of the thinking way and contents. Metaphor is a prominent and crucial way for human beings to perceive the world.Based on theories of Chomsky's linguistic competence and Hymes'communicative competence, Gardner (1979) proposed the theory of metaphoric competence and defined metaphoric competence as the capacity to paraphrase a metaphor, to explain the rationale for the metaphor's effectiveness, to produce a metaphor appropriate for a given context, and to evaluate the appropriateness of several metaphoric expressions. Littlemore (2001) believes that four aspects should be involved when metaphoric competence is examined, that is, the originality of metaphor production, fluency of metaphor interpretation, the ability to find meaning in metaphor, and speed in finding meaning in metaphor. The originality of metaphor production can be categorized into production and the other three into recognition. Azuma (2005) divided metaphoric competence into receptive metaphoric competence and productive metaphoric competence.The studies of metaphor flourished in the past, but the application of metaphor to EFL learning is far from demanded. According to Richards (1965), one third of our daily utterances are metaphorical. English language learners will encounter metaphorical expressions in the learning process. If we could prove that language learners'metaphoric competence correlates with their language proficiency, the acquisition process could be accelerated by cultivating their metaphoric competence. Aiming at researching the correlation between metaphoric competence and reading proficiency of high school students, as well as the problems they may encounter with metaphoric competence, the author conducted empirical research on high school students of one high school of Lanzhou. The author adopted Zhao Qian's (2008) Metaphoric Competence Test which originated from Azuma's (2005), and revised it for high school students to test the subjects'metaphoric competence. Reading proficiency was measured by scores of the reading portion of a diagnostic test for NMET. The data collected were processed by SPSS 13.0(Statistical Product and Service Solutions). What's more, the author interviewed some subjects and their English teacher, and distributed questionnaires to all the subjects, with the purpose of knowing subjects'difficulties in metaphor interpretation.The findings of this research show that the metaphor competence of high school students is at a relatively low level; metaphoric competence and reading proficiency of high school students are significantly correlated with each other; high school students encountered many problems in metaphor interpretation, such as their limited vocabulary, lack of systematic knowledge of metaphor, and lack of contextual knowledge.The thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter introduces the selection of the topic and the significance of this research. The second chapter describes the status quo of metaphor study and metaphoric competence study, and the application to EFL is also introduced in this chapter. The third chapter constructs the theoretical frame of this thesis, and the fourth one introduces the research questions, subjects, instruments and methods. The fifth chapter processes and discusses the data collected in this research. The last chapter concludes the whole thesis and offers some suggestions for future research. |
