A Study On Chinese L2 Learners' Metaphor Comprehension Strategies And Model Construction

The essence of metaphor is that it is a cognitive phenomenon.Metaphor is not based on objective similarity,but on empirical similarity.It is a cognitive approach that projects the schema structure of a conceptual domain(called source domain)onto another one(called target domain)so that we can understand the latter through the former.Metaphors have different categories.And it can be divided into basic metaphors and complex metaphors.The basic metaphor is from physical experience.And the complex metaphor is composed of basic metaphors,also containing many other factors,like cultural traditions and conventions,values and beliefs and so on.The formation process of complex metaphor is more complicated.This study focuses on the use of metaphor comprehension strategies in Chinese L2 learners,and summarizes the types of strategies used in Chinese L2 learners'metaphor understanding process.Considering the metaphor category and the learner's cultural background,the paper examines the influence of the two factors on the correct rate of metaphor understanding,the number of strategies used and the correct rate of strategy use.The paper firstly studies the use of metaphor understanding strategies of Chinese L2 learners,and then attempts to construct a metaphor understanding process model by analyzing the use of strategies.The research method of the paper is thinking aloud.It has 23 Chinese L2 learners participated in the process of thinking aloud report,10 of whom are Thai native speakers,and 13 are Malay native speakers,and then SPSS 25.0 is used in the statistical analysis.The software performs statistical analysis on the collected audio report data.The research results show that Chinese L2 learners mainly use nine metaphor understanding strategies,including:literal interpretation,grammar analysis,random guessing,word meaning interpretation,sentence context,association analogy,general knowledge,target language culture knowledge,and native language knowledge.The type of strategy has a significant impact on the number of times it is used and the correct rate of its usage.The top three strategies for frequency of use are sentence context,association analogy,and general knowledge.These three strategies are related to context,and thus illustrate the important role of context(background knowledge)in metaphor understanding of Chinese L2 learners.The metaphor understanding process is the process in which learners' relevant background knowledge and experience are activated.Metaphorical understanding depends both on the sentence context and the learner's background knowledge.Grammatical analysis strategies are seldom used,and it reflects that Chinese L2 learners rely less on grammar and language knowledge to understand Chinese metaphors.The correct rate of strategy use reflects the actual efficiency of the strategy.From the perspective of the correct rate of strategy,sentence context strategy and word meaning interpretation strategy are used frequently in metaphor understanding,and the correct rate of use is also high.The use of native language knowledge and grammar analysis is low,but the correct rate is high.The general knowledge strategy is used frequently,but the strategy use rate is relatively low,indicating that although this strategy is commonly used,its actual efficiency is poor.The study also explores the impact of metaphor categories and cultural background on the use of metaphor understanding strategies.The main findings are as follows:Firstly,the metaphor category and the learners' cultural background do not affect the number of times the strategy is used and its correct rate.Secondly,for association analogy and general common sense strategies,different metaphor categories' correct rate is significantly different,and the basic metaphor's strategy use rate is significantly higher than the complex metaphor's strategy use accuracy rate.It shows that metaphor category is a factor that affects the efficiency of use of a particular strategy type.This result further proves that there are differences in the efficiency of use of context-related strategies,and metaphor category is a factor that affects the difference in efficiency of their use.Thirdly,in the correct rate of the association analogy strategy,the Malay native speakers are significantly higher than the Thai native speakers.It shows that the use of specific strategies is culturally specific,and the learners from different cultural backgrounds may show differences in the use of specific strategies.This study builds a "holistic" metaphor understanding model,based on the use of metaphor understanding strategies of Chinese L2 learners.The "holistic" metaphor understanding model of Chinese L2 learners presents the characteristics of "meaning understanding first" and "overall meaning understanding".The metaphor understanding process depends on context and background knowledge,and less analytical processes such as grammar analysis are used.When metaphor is understood,the internal context of the sentence,the learner's physical experience,their encyclopedic knowledge,their belief and values,their cultural tradition,their cultural conventions,and the related semantic associations are all activated.