A Study Of Metaphor Performance Of Chinese EFL Learners

The present research is intended to reveal what is going on mentally and linguistically when Chinese EFL learners come to the important linguistic phenomenon:Metaphor. It is aimed at answering the following four research questions:1. Do Chinese EFL learners activate underlying conceptual mappings when dealing with English metaphors as advocated by the Conceptual Metaphor Theory? 2. Do Chinese EFL learners search for an attributive category exemplified by the vehicle when comprehending English metaphors as stated by the Attributive Categorization Theory? 3. Do Chinese EFL learners need more time to comprehend English metaphors than time needed for literal sentences? 4. Are Chinese EFL learners more likely to use literal sentences instead of equivalent metaphoric sentences when producing English sentences?The study used the concept of reaction time which is connected with brain activities. It was a combination of quantitative and qualitative research on the metaphor performance of Chinese EFL learners. E-prime software which provides millisecond precision timing to ensure the accuracy of the data was used for the two experiments. Experiment 1, based on the idea of priming effect, was completely randomized single factorial design, with a Control Group and an Experimental Group. Experiment 2 used a 2 (English level:English majors, non-English majors; between-subjects)Ñ…2 (Stimuli:literal, metaphorical; between-subjects) factorial design. Test papers were designed for the two tests:Test 1 and Test 2. The task of Test 1 was interpretation and that of Test 2 was translation. The main statistical methods were independent samples t-test, two way ANOVA, and frequency analysis with data processed by SPSS 13.0.On the whole, results of the experiments and tests show that Chinese EFL learners, different from native English speakers, need increased time to search for a suitable attributive category in order to understand English metaphors. This results in their reluctance to use metaphor to convey meaning, as advocated by the principle of least effort. These findings may make it more complicated to evaluate the metaphoric competence of Chinese EFL learners, because evaluated under natural conditions without being told to consider factors such as concreteness and expressiveness, Chinese EFL learners will most probably follow the principle of least effort and show low metaphoric competence. Therefore the former premise for studies on metaphoric competence should be reconsidered. Moreover, it can be concluded from the findings that better training and more learning experience do enhance general metaphor performance of Chinese EFL learners. Categorizations should be considered when dealing with metaphors in classroom, and students should be allowed time to construct metaphors and be encouraged to express themselves with more concreteness.The present research not only provides tentative answers to the four research questions, but also sheds new light on some areas such as the difference in metaphor comprehension between native English speakers and Chinese EFL learners and the cognitive specialty of Chinese EFL learners. Taken together, these results may contribute to metaphoric competence study and metaphor learning and teaching.