Effects Of Metaphor Instruction On College Students’ English Metaphoric Competence:an Empirical Study

According to results in the research of cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor is a means of cognition and a way of thinking. Therefore, it is of great importance for second language learners to develop metaphoric competence. But from the existing research, we find that the focus of the research on MC falls mainly on the definition and its variable factors, and a few studies only stay in advocating and calling for improving MC. As for the issue of how to improve it, few research is seen, especially from an empirical perspective. Based on the empirical method, this research is to explore the effects of metaphor teaching on the development of college students’ MC(the ability to recognize, interpret and produce metaphors).This study is based on Lakoff & Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis. Research subjects in this study are two intact classes from non-English majors of a College. They are all freshmen. One is the experimental group, which receives metaphoric treatment and the other is the control group, which receives routine teaching without any interference of metaphors during the four-week experiment. Metaphors are classified into three groups in this study: metaphors that are similar to Chinese ones, metaphors that are different from Chinese ones and metaphors that do not even exist in Chinese. The study intends to explore the effects of metaphor instruction on MC. To be more specific, we have addressed the following three questions :1. What are the effects of metaphor instruction on the recognition of metaphors?2. What are the effects of metaphor instruction on the interpretation of metaphors?3. What are the effects of metaphor instruction on the production of metaphors?Based on the analysis of data from the performance of subjects in the EG and the CG in both pretest and post-test, we have such changes in the performance of the EG after metaphor teaching:1. In the aspect of metaphor recognition, performance on all the three groups of metaphors has achieved obvious progress;2. In the aspect of metaphor interpretation, performance on the first and the second group of metaphors has significantly improved;3. In terms of metaphor production, changes only take place in the first group of metaphor.From above findings, this study arrives at conclusions that the effects of metaphor instruction on MC are not equally prominent in all aspects of MC: It is more remarkable in metaphor recognition and metaphor interpretation, but it is not the case in metaphor production. These findings are both theoretically and pedagogically significant, for they disclose the effects of metaphor instruction on MC and enrich the relevant research.