A Comparative Study Of English Metaphoric Competence Between Arts And Science Non-English Majors

In the end of 20 th century,influenced by the theory of conceptual metaphor,foreign language educators have noticed the importance of metaphor in foreign language teaching.Metaphoric competence(MC)is first proposed by psychologist Gardner & Winner(1978).Low(1988)argues that the ability to produce and comprehend metaphor is essential in L2 learning,as metaphor can be used to aid comprehension,and clarify ideas.Though the definition of MC is not defined,Littlemore’s definition(2001)is the most frequently quoted one.To Littlemore,MC consists of four components: the ability to find meaning in metaphor,the originality of metaphor production,the fluency of metaphor interpretation,and the speed to find meaning in metaphor.This thesis will explore the status quo of non-English majors’ MC and English proficiency(EP)by comparing college students of arts and science majors except English majors,and try to analyze the relationship among different disciplines,EP and MC.Therefore,this thesis will try to answer the following questions:(1)Do majors differences influence MC and what is the influence?(2)Does EP have any effect on MC of science and arts non-English majors? If any,to what extent?(3)How can college students’ MC be improved? It is expected that,in foreign language classroom,the primary findings in the study can promote the English learning and teaching.This study adopts the method of quantitative methodology.200 non-English-major college students in their third grade in China University of Political and Science Law(CUPL)and China University of Petroleum(Beijing)(CUPB)are selected as the subjects,among which there are 100 arts major students from CUPL and 100 science major students from CUPB.The MC test is redesigned in terms of a set of test papers worked out by Littlemore(2001)and the College English Test Band Four(CET-4)is taken advantage as measurements of subjects’ EP.All data are precisely analyzed by SPSS 13.0.The major findings are summarized as follows:(a)Subjects’ scores of MC test and EP test are at a low level,indicating that MC and EP of Chinese non-English major students still need to be developed.(b)Major differences do have certain influence on MC since arts major subjects’ scores of MC are higher than science subjects’.(c)There is a correlation between EP and MC.Subjects who enjoy high EP perform much better in MC test.Based on the findings above,we can discover some implications for foreign language teaching and learning as follows:(a)MC and metaphoric awareness should be improved for learners as well as for teachers.Teachers should be familiar with the fruitful works about MC and adapt them to classroom foreign language teaching.(b)Foreign language teachers should pay attention to the phenomenon of conceptual transfer and metaphorical transfer in the second language learning and tell students to use them in an appropriate way.(c)To foreign language learners,they should enrich their metaphors by reading plenty of books,such as novels,poems and dramas etc..