An Empirical Study Of Chinese EFL Learners' Acquisition Of English Denominal Verb Metaphors

The study of EFL learners' acquisition of English denominal verb metaphors can be traced to the research of metaphor.Though there are a considerable number of previous studies on metaphor in relevant academic fields,study on the acquisition of denominal verb metaphors and metaphorical competence is still in its infancy.Therefore,this study is designed to discover the development of metaphorical competence of Chinese EFL learners at different English levels by investigating their English denominal verb metaphor acquisition and exploring their use of metaphor processing strategies in interpreting the target denominal verb metaphors.To achieve these objectives,a cross-sectional study is conducted.120 EFL learners from three different English levels,namely 51 Grade 2 senior high school students,35 first-year and 34 third-year university students,are selected randomly as participants.All 120 learners are involved in the English denominal verb metaphors test in order to investigate their acquisition of 45 target denominal verb metaphors,and 15 of them are involved in the stimulated recall task to explore their use of metaphor processing strategies.Through rounded analysis with the help of Excel software and SPSS 22.0,this study finds that:1.Chinese EFL learners at different English levels have different degrees of acquisition of English denominal verb metaphors.To be specific,learners of the third year in university has the highest acquisition level,followed by learners of the first year in university,and learners of Grade 2 in senior high school has the lowest acquisition level.The acquisition difference between learners of Grade 2 in senior high school and learners of the first year in university is larger than the difference between learners of the first year and learners of the third year in university.Possible factors resulting in the acquisition difference include: age,period of exposure to English language,density and frequency of metaphorical expressions in oral and written discourse,learners' focus of learning and the requirement of learners' future career.2.Totally seven types of metaphor processing strategies are used when interpreting the target English denominal verb metaphors,including: literal meaningstrategy,mental image strategy,sentence context strategy,structural analysis strategy,English knowledge strategy,Chinese knowledge strategy,and encyclopedic knowledge strategy.Semantic retention of parent noun of the target denominal verb metaphor and the use of analogy are found in learners' use of literal meaning strategy and mental image strategy.And learners' first language transfer is a positive factor facilitating their interpretation of English denominal verb metaphors.3.EFL learners' metaphor identification competence is better than their metaphor interpretation competence.And a noticeable gap is found in the metaphorical competence of EFL learners at different levels;EFL learners' metaphorical competence of English denominal verbs is improved with the development of their English language.Based on the findings mentioned above,this study wishes to shed some light on the future study and teaching of English denominal verb metaphors in EFL class in China.