English Teachers’ Metaphoric Competence And Its Effect On Teaching In Junior Middle School

Aristotle was the first to discuss the pedagogical value of using metaphors."Strange words," he wrote,"simply puzzle us; ordinary words convey only what we know already; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh"’ What’s more, metaphor is not only found in words, but also in thought and action. Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) seminal work Metaphors We Live By foregrounded conceptual metaphor is bound up with culture and everyday reasoning. In addition, conceptual system of human beings involves metaphorical processing, comprehending and using, even the conceptual system of human beings itself is constructed by metaphor. In the process of teaching a foreign language, it is vital for teachers to possess the ability to comprehend and produce metaphor in that metaphor is pervasive in everyday language and is closely related to human thought, and that the lack of this ability in the target language and failure in assimilating its conceptual system will necessarily impair ready interpretation and adequate expression. While analogies and metaphors can help students make creative and imaginative links between existing conceptual frameworks and those associated with new knowledge, thereby facilitating its assimilation, the study of junior middle school English teachers’metaphorical competence and use of metaphor and whether these have an effect on their teaching remain an under-researched area of educational practice in China. Therefore, in the hoping of making the functions of metaphor definite and exploring the implications of metaphoric competence in junior middle school EFL teaching, this paper will focus on the correlation between junior middle school English teachers’metaphoric competence and its effect on teaching. Specifically, the following research questions are put forward and addressed in the study:1) What is the general status of English teachers’metaphoric competence in Junior Middle School?2) What is the effect of English teachers’metaphoric competence on their teaching?The research data are mainly obtained through four instruments which are questionnaire, tests, classroom observation and interviews. The questionnaire is Metaphoric Competence Questionnaire for Teachers. Tests include two Mid-term English Proficiency Tests for Students.The major findings of the study are:1) The overall metaphoric competence level of the teachers is found to be relatively low and there is much room for improvement. There are, however, some teachers who are found to have comparatively higher metaphoric competence.2) The teacher’high metaphoric competence emerged in teaching, though it appeared to be unsystematic. What’s more, their ways of teaching reflects their teaching objectives and affect their teaching results, among which may be their students’learning motivation, interest, strategy and learning efficiency.The pedagogical implications of the study are:1) The teachers should learn to know more about metaphor to improve their metaphoric competence and to apply metaphoric teaching in the classroom.2) Those teachers with better metaphoric competence should take advantage of it and try to apply more metaphoric teaching in their teaching practice.3) It’s of necessity for English teachers to conduct metaphoric teaching to find out more about the educational value of metaphor in English teaching and learning.