A Comparative Study On Metaphor Use In Oral English Class By Chinese English Teachers And Native English Teachers

Metaphor study has been a research focus in the field of cognitive linguistics for a long time.In recent years,researchers have focused on “real-world metaphor research”,including metaphor use in classroom teaching environment and classroom discourse.Cameron(2003)found out that metaphor could be used in such discourses as classroom discourse,teacher talk and textbooks and so on.Metaphors occur in every part of the teaching activity,such as in the process of organizing the class,arranging the activities,explaining the concepts,concluding and feedback and so on.As a very important component of English learning in the classroom setting,the teacher talk and interaction between teacher and students have significant influence on English learning.From the perspective of cultivating students' metaphorical competence,the metaphors used by teacher will imperceptibly influence students' language output.Meanwhile,due to the differences of language and cultural backgrounds of both Chinese English teachers and native English teachers,it is presumed that particular regularities and features may exist in the metaphorical expressions produced in the classroom discourse of their oral English class respectively.Regarding the aforementioned issues and aspects,this study intends to investigate the degree of metaphor use by both Chinese and native English teachers in their teacher talk in oral English class as well as teachers' awareness of metaphor use.Based on the related theories of real-world metaphor research,characteristics of oral English and categories of teacher talk in oral English classroom,the study observes,records and transcribes eight oral English classes conducted by teachers with different language backgrounds and quantitatively and qualitatively analyzes these discourses by focusing on such notions as metaphor density,different metaphor types,and distribution of metaphor across different teaching stages.The study employs MIP as the identification instrument to identify metaphors in the discourses.The study finds out that the metaphor density in oral English class by native teachers is higher than that of Chinese English teachers,verbal metaphors are applied more than that of other types by both the Chinese and native English teachers,and metaphors occur in the process of organizing and instructing are more frequent than that in other teaching stages.The interviews about awareness of metaphor use with the teachers under investigated show that both Chinese and native English teachers are not strong being aware that whether or how they use metaphors in their own teacher talk,deliberately or non-deliberately.As indicated in the study,teacher talk generally tends to be literal rather than metaphorical while in most cases,language teachers have not yet been conscious of the importance of metaphor use in terms of the roles and functions in language classroom teaching.