The Cultivation Of Metaphorical Competence In Writing Among Undergraduate Chinese Non-English Majors

Lakoff and Johnson put forward the theory of conceptual metaphor during 1980 s when they published Metaphors We Live By,the book which actually signified the beginning of the cognitive study of metaphors.According to this theory,metaphor is not only an aspect of language but also constitutes a significant part of the human cognitive and conceptual system.In the following decades,metaphor becomes the object of the multitudinous disciplines,which also provides a new perspective for the study of EFL teaching and learning.Writing is an essential content in English learning for all Chinese language learners and is a reflection of their comprehensive ability in English learning.However,a void exists in the cultivation of students' conceptual thinking in college English teaching because traditional EFL teaching merely emphasizes training the linguistic knowledge and language skills of students,such as vocabulary acquisition,grammar learning and model-imitation.Therefore,EFL teachers are required to adopt appropriate writing teaching approaches to foster the cognitive competence of college students.Some scholars(Danesi,1994;Knoeller,2004;Eubanks,2010)indicated that the writings of EFL learners,despite the verbal fluency,lacked the conceptual appropriateness that characterized the corresponding discourses of the native speaker.The present research introduces metaphorical knowledge into English writing learning for college students.Theoretical research and empirical analysis are combined to explore whether cultivating metaphorical competence(MC)is a feasible way for college students to improve their English writing ability,which may offer a few new methods to teach English writing using a metaphorical cognitive strategy.In this thesis,a teaching experiment was conducted in Xi'an International Studies University where two class students were involved.The subjects included 58 non-English majors who have approximately similar educational background.Initially,a pre-test was administered to evaluate the original MC and English writing ability of the students.In the experiment,there was a random assignment of the two classes into two groups,control and experimental.The conduct of the experiment lasted for nine weeks in which the experimental class(EC)implemented a teaching approach involving metaphorical competence cultivation(MCC),while the other group,the control class(CC),only observed the traditional teaching method of writing.In the last class of the experiment,there was a post-test conducted to measure the teaching outcomes of the given two teaching approaches.Finally,SPSS18.0 was used to analyse the collected data with descriptive analysis,correlation analysis and independent samples t-test.Furthermore,nine students from the EC were interviewed to measure the attitudes of the participants on the teaching methods of writing.The findings highlighted that: 1)The level of the subjects' metaphorical competence is rather low,particularly in metaphor production.Moreover,their English writing ability is also unsatisfactory,and the weaknesses mainly lie in the nonnative-like expressions.2)The English writing ability of the subjects is positively correlated with metaphorical competence and the three constitutions of metaphorical competence,thereby providing theoretical basis in bringing the metaphor development into the teaching practice.3)The writings of experimental students are improved more significantly than that of control group students.Particularly,the improvements of the EC students are reflected in the areas of language form,content,and organization.Finally,the findings of the research imparted some pedagogical ramifications in English learning and teaching in China.Both the recommendations for future studies and the limitations of the present study are also proposed.