An Experimental Study On Cultivation Of Metaphoric Competence For Non-english Majors In Newly-established College

The research on metaphor has lasted for about two thousand years. In a very long periodof time, metaphor is only regarded as a figure of speech, whose main function is modification.In1980, in Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff&Johnson gave their definition of cognitivemetaphor: to understand and experience one kind of things through another kind of things.Since then, people have come to know the cognitive function of metaphor in humanlanguages and thoughts. With the development of contemporary view of metaphor, it has beenregarded as ways of cognition and means of thinking, which has been accepted by manypeople. Metaphor not only enriches language expressions, but also helps the languageacquisition. In fact, it is an important tool for language development.The concept “Metaphoric competence” was first introduced to the second languageacquisition research by Marcel Danesi. He claims that teachers should use metaphoricalconcept as a breakthrough in foreign language teaching, and they should emphasize fosteringthe students’ cognitive competence of metaphor. After years of researches, the metaphoriccompetence is roughly understood as the ability to understand metaphor, explain metaphor,and in a particular context, generate appropriate metaphor. Lack of metaphoric competencewill lead to the lack of the L2learners’ authentic use of the language as native speakers.To language learners, the learning of a language well is not just how many grammaticalrules they have mastered. Language learning is part of a more general process of individualmaturation, which includes being a member of a cultural group (Atkinson,1999). So,cognitive linguistics believes that the aim of foreign language teaching is not only theacquisition of the target language but also the improvement of their cognitive ability to thetarget language. The recent developments of cognitive linguistics have prompted theimportance of metaphor. The important roles that metaphor has played in language learninghave been emphasized. Many scholars said that in second language education, more attentionshould be given to the teaching of strategies for comprehending and generating metaphors;Cultivating the L2learners’ metaphoric competence can help them to improve their ability in communication (蔡龙权，2003).This thesis is the discussion of metaphor cognitive theory. Firstly this paper will discussthe relationship among linguistic competence, communicative competence and metaphoriccompetence. Then by making an experimental study on four classes of Non-English majors inHunan First Normal College, we will illustrate the connection among metaphoric competence,conceptual metaphor and language learning. The improvement of learners’ metaphoriccompetence can facilitate their English proficiency, which has also been proved by theexperimental study. It is of practical importance if teachers put conceptual metaphors intoEnglish education and the strategies for cultivating Non-English majors’ metaphoriccompetence will be explored in this paper.In this experimental study, the subjects are Chinese majors and Art majors of HunanFirst Normal College, which is a newly-established college. Two classes were chosen in eachmajor: one is a control class and the other is an experiment class, and each class has45students. These four classes have the same English teacher, the same English teachingprocedure and the same total number of teaching time. Before the experiment class began, theprevious final exam was used to test students’ English learning result. In order to teststudents’ metaphoric competence, the author, based on other experts’ metaphoric competencetests, designed a pre-test and a post-test. After the pre-test, one term of experimental teachingwas carried out. At the end of the term, the experiment class joined in the post-test, which wasdesigned to test their metaphoric competence and joined in the final-examination of this term.All the valid data was analyzed by SPSS17.0. The following conclusions are drawnaccording to the data discussion:1. In newly-established colleges, the metaphoric competence of non-English majors hasnot been developed fully.2. In newly-established colleges, the metaphoric competence of non-English majors hasclose correlation with their English learning achievement.3. The metaphoric competence of students will influence their English proficiencydirectly.4. The metaphoric competence of students can be learned and taught, and it can becultivated through classroom teaching. Last, some instructive suggestions for cultivating the metaphoric competence ofnon-English majors have been put forward, such as reinforcing L2teachers’ knowledge ofmetaphor, cultivating non-English majors’ awareness of metaphors, foresting the non-Englishmajors’ ability of metaphor comprehension, developing non-English majors’ metaphoricthinking and cultivating their creativity, helping non-English majors to master the workingmechanism of metaphor etc.