A Cognitive Approach To Fostering Metaphoric Competence In English Learning--Studies Of Metaphors In Business English

The present research, by analyzing and categorizing some business metaphors, tries to explore the cognitive process of inferring metaphorical meanings in understanding metaphors by English learners. The topic is chosen out of two considerations: first, most English learners find it difficult to understand metaphors, especially those that require effort to work out the metaphorical meanings; second, metaphoric competence is closely related to the ways in which a culture organizes its world conceptually, a cultivation of metaphoric competence would help to develop conceptual fluency in second/foreign language learning. Discussion of a questionnaire designed to find out the status quo of Englishlearners' ability of understanding metaphors shows that students have many difficulties in understanding metaphors, which suggests that the topic of metaphors should not be neglected in second/foreign language teaching and learning. Solutions are given to the problems revealed by the questionnaire, and some feasible means in metaphor teaching are also proposed for reference.