A Teaching Application Study Based On The Effect Of Metaphorical Competence On Language Competence

In the background of our socialist market economy and the reform and opening policy,plenty of innovative foreign language talents are needed.At the same time,education and foreign language circles have been exploring the way to improve foreign language teaching,in order to cultivate foreign language talents with high quality.In this process,cognitive linguistics promotes metaphor as a thinking mode and a cognitive tool from a previously-regarded figure of speech.Cognitive theory of metaphor advocates using the known to understand the unknown,and putting them together to construct new knowledge,which echoes with the constructivist learning theory and follows the learners' cognitive psychological regulation.Hence,the competence to recognize,to understand and to create metaphor is essential enough to be cultivated in foreign language teaching as a new attempt.By far,there have been a great number of studies about metaphorical competence and its function on foreign language teaching,but more of which are theoretical.Less empirical studies have been done.Given this,this paper tries to make an empirical study about the correlation between metaphorical competence and language competence.The empirical study,based on the hypothesis that CET-4 represents students' language competence and on a test originated from Littlemore's standards of metaphorical competence,makes a comparative analysis between language competence and metaphorical competence from 100 non-English college students.It finally comes to the conclusion that there is positive correlation between metaphorical competence and language competence.That is,the stronger the metaphorical competence is,the stronger the language competence is.Based on the empirical study result,this paper then puts forward the new idea of cultivating students' metaphorical competence in foreign language teaching,and proposes some feasible suggestions to develop metaphorical competence from the following four aspects: vocabulary,grammar,discourse and culture.All in all,this paper demonstrates the positive correlation between metaphoricalcompetence and language competence theoretically and empirically,and proposes the concrete strategies to cultivate metaphorical competence,which helps promote the application research in cognitive linguistics and cognitive teaching approach in real classroom.Meanwhile,it is an active response to the policy of cultivating innovative foreign language talents.