meanings of the English terms, their interpretations suggested that they took advantage of the metaphoric mappings well.
Summary of the Results of the Comprehension Test
Table 4.21 summarizes the results of the Comprehension Test by showing the status of the hypotheses.
Table 4.21
Summary of the Results of the Comprehension Test
Hypothesis Hypothesis 4: To improve comprehension of
metaphoric and metonymic expressions, instruction involving MM is more helpful than instruction involving CM.
Not support Not support
Hypothesis 5: Instruction involving MM can improve comprehension of figurative expressions which are different from L1 in literal meanings, figurative meanings, and conceptual metaphors more efficiently than instruction involving CM.
Support Support
Hypothesis 6: Instruction involving MM can lead toward longer-term effect on retention than instruction involving CM can.
Support Support
Discussions of the Comprehension Test L1-transfer Interference
The fourth hypothesis which states that instruction on metaphoric mappings is more helpful in improving comprehension of metaphoric and metonymic expressions than instruction on conceptual metaphors and metonymies did not seem to be well supported. The MM-group participants in both universities did not perform
significantly better in the posttest, as the results reported in Table 4.17, and the
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progress the MM-group participants made between two tests were not significantly different from the progress the CM-group participants made, as the results shown in Table 4.18. In other words, the two groups of participants seemed to perform similarly well. However, the results reported in Table 4.18 also show that, though the
differences were not significant, the degree of progress the MM-group participants made were still higher than that made by the CM-group participants. Therefore, the findings suggest that the MM-group participants still benefited from the instruction in some ways; the findings also partially support the sixth hypothesis which states that instruction involving metaphoric mappings can lead toward longer-term effect in retention than instruction involving conceptual metaphors and metonymies can.
Judging from the finer-grained analyses on four possible patterns of L2-to-L1 translations, the slight differences on the performances of the MM-group participants resulted from their significant improvements mainly on P4, as the results shown in Table 4.20. The improving performances were shown not only on the scores
qualitatively but also on the interpretations qualitatively. Qualitative analyses suggest that the participants in the MM group especially showed their capability for mappings unfamiliar concepts and thus received higher scores. The answers of the MM-group participants usually delivered more vivid images than the answers given by the CM-group participants, and expressed the metaphoric/metonymic expressions with more appropriate senses of figurative meanings. For example, in Sentence 10, the MM-group participants captured connoted characteristics of the conceptual domain of storm, and translated the English expression into Chinese with concepts of speed and fierceness. In Sentence 11, the MM-group participants also displayed the mapping process from concrete images lift and up to abstract concept of energy and excitement.
Compared to the CM-group participants who tended to interpret the expressions in more general terms indicating broader ranges of meanings, the MM-group
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participants seemed to equip considerable cognitive flexibility.
The benefits that instruction of metaphoric mappings brought include better comprehension of meanings and livelier imagination of figurative senses. These advantages can be attributed to the mapping processes which instruction on
metaphoric mappings consists of. Instruction on conceptual metaphors only points out ontological mapping relations, such as ANGER IS FIRE, to learners. However, when L1 does not share the conceptual metaphors with L2, L2 learners would face a problem of not being able to make logical comparisons between two unfamiliar concepts or subjects. That is to say, for L2 learners who already speak one language and rely on one established construal system, the formation of new construal systems is necessary for successful L2 acquisition (Ellis, 2006a). Instruction on metaphoric mappings, which explicitly points out epistemic mapping processes and offers clearer connections between abstract or unfamiliar concepts and concrete and familiar ones, facilitate the formation of L2 construal systems. Thus, in the study, the MM-group participants mastered the unfamiliar L2 concepts better than the CM-group
participants did, and gained higher mean scores.
Although the instruction on metaphoric mappings resulted in better
comprehension, the improvements were not enough to reach significant levels. The qualitative analyses offer explanations for the unsatisfactory results: for L2 learners, successful formation of a L2 construal system means to understand how the target language categorization system works and how it differs from a L1 system. However, the pre-existing L1 categorization systems are hard to break and thus cause
interference (Weinreich, 1953, as cited in Ellis, 2006a). For example, in Sentence 10, the participants tended to categorize storm into Chinese metaphoric senses about anger, such as in 大發雷霆 dà fā léi tíng (big send-out thunderclap ‗to flare up‘) in which storm and thunder were both categorized into types of anger. However, in
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Chinese storm is related to the direction in, as in a normal expression 被捲入暴風中 bèi juăn rù bào-fēng zhōng (PRT pull into storm inside ‗being involved in a stormy crisis‘) and seldom used with the direction out. Therefore, some participants wrote dash into in answers like 生氣的衝進會議室裡 shēng-qì de chōng jìn huì-yì-shì lǐ (‗Dash into the conference room angrily‘) rather than dash out. Another
L1-interference example is Sentence 11. In Chinese lift and up are frequently related to excitements, but they are not specifically related to happiness. Thus, the
participants‘ interpretations were influenced by the L1 existing knowledge and translated the L2 expressions into 興奮 xīng-fèn (‗Excitement‘) or 振奮 zhèn fèn ( ‗Cheer up‘) rather than happiness.
To overcome the binding power of L1 construal systems and to form different perspectives of L2, explicit instructions which make learners aware of construal systems that exit in L2 but not in L1 can accelerate process of acquisition (Littlemore, 2009). Instruction on metaphoric mappings, which displays detailed and systematic corresponding relations between two concepts, offers direct guidance to mental mappings that are needed to interpret L2 expressions. Thus, it smoothly bridges the gaps between L1 and L2 construal systems and cultural differences.
Since instruction on metaphoric mappings were proved to be helpful for L2 learners to bridge the cultural gaps and find appropriate explanations, the instruction should be claimed beneficial for L2 learning. At the same time, to lower the negative influence of L1 transfer, more explicit presentation of L2 construal systems may be useful.
Extraneous Factors
Some extraneous factors rather than the test itself affected the results of the Comprehension Test. The factors included ways of operating the computer program,
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time of finishing the test, and order of the test items. Those factors, based on the participants‘ comments in an informal post survey done after the tests, somehow influenced the participants‘ physical and mental status and then affected their performances.
First, ways of operating the computer program caused some difficulties for the participants. The Comprehension Test, the same as the Awareness Test, required the participants to respond on computer. However, while the Awareness Test required the participants to type just one key to represent their evaluation on a scale, the
Comprehension Test demanded the participants to type complete sentences in Chinese.
Though the participants were provided with two samples for practices before moving on to the main test, they still encountered some operating difficulties during the test, such as slow speed of typing and unfamiliar input methods. Due to the program limitation, the Comprehension Test program only allowed Zhù-Yīn Chinese Input Method; some participants who were used to other types of input methods, like Cāng-Jié Chinese Input Method, were forced to use Zhù-Yīn Chinese Input Method and thus typed slower.
The slower typing speed was just one of the factors that affected time of finishing the test. Another factor was the exhaustion caused by the consecutive test-taking process. The Awareness Test was given to the participants first, and required the participants to read 48 sentences swiftly and concentratedly in 15 minutes. The
process would consume lots of mental efforts; in addition, the participants‘ eyes might feel tired too because of long-time close-reading on computers. When they moved on to the Comprehension Test, they might be weary of doing tests and started to slow down on the speed of answering.
The other reason that caused unsatisfactory performances on the test was orders of test items. Approaching to the end of the test, the participants started to be impatient
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because of mental exhaustion. Therefore, the answer rate became relatively lower. For example, three out of 113 participants did not answer the eleventh test item in the pretest (97% answer rate) and 16 out of 113 participants gave up answering the twelfth test item (86% answer rate). Similar situation happened in the posttest: four participants did not answer the eleventh test item (96% answer rate) and four did not answer the twelfth test item (96% answer rate). Those participants received a score of 0 and thus lower the overall mean scores.
Difficulty Levels of the Four Possibilities
Theories of L1-L2 transfer, such as different levels of similarity/universality and differences/specificity between L1 and L2, can also be attributed to the presumption of difficulty levels regarding learning L2 figurative expressions. It was predicted that learners may face different degrees of difficulties graduating from P1 to P4 in
transferring expressions from L2 to L1. If L1 and L2 share literal meanings, figurative meanings, and conceptual metaphors of figurative expressions, comprehending L2 figurative expressions should be easier for L2 learners because they can resort to exiting L1 knowledge (Killerman, 1977). Contrarily, if L1 and L2 are different in every aspect, understanding figurative expressions should be more difficult for L2 learners because they have to not only overcome L1 interferences but also establish new L2 construal system (Ellis, 2006a).
However, the results of the Comprehension Test did not completely conform to the presumption. P4, which represents expressions that are different between L1 and L2 in literal and figurative meanings as well as conceptual metaphors, scored the lowest as expected. Nevertheless, P1, which represents expressions that are similar between L1 and L2 in every aspect, did not score the highest. Surprisingly, despite the difficulty caused by cultural-specificity, the mean score of P3 was still the highest
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among the four, followed by P1, P2, and P4.
The lower answer rate offers a part of reason why P1 did not score the highest as predicted. The eleventh test item in the pretest, which belonged to P1, happened to be the twelfth test item in the posttest. Compared with P1, P3 did not contain test items which were ordered as the last two and received no score of 0, hence reduced the influence of a score of 0 on the final mean score.
In addition to extraneous factors, the unmatched prediction on difficulty levels of the four possibilities might be attributed to the present situation in foreign language teaching contexts. As mentioned in Chapter 2, most textbooks on figurative language still rely on traditional rote learning, which requires L2 learners to memorize English metaphoric/metonymic expressions, figurative meanings, and sample sentence structures. Studies (Chen, 2011; Lai & Chen, 2010) also confirm that EFL learners tend to pay more attention to expressions which were idiom-like and were more assertive in using them. The participants in the present study, who were about 19 years of age, were not in time for the new trend of teaching proposed by the cognitive linguists, and hence they were still asked to memorize metaphoric/metonymic terms like idioms during their early years of learning. Therefore, they performed well on expressions belonging to P3 with fixed answers.
However, the way of learning by memorizing has a potential flaw: it is almost impossible for learners to memorize all figurative expressions, idioms and slangs included. Therefore, when encountering an unlearned expression, learners may fail to comprehend and interpret due to their lack of certain knowledge. The expression go banana in Sentence 12 happens to be an example. The variety of interpretations indicated that most participants gave their interpretations based on context clues, not on direct comprehension of the expressions. Only few participants were able to give exact interpretations of the expressions. The researcher, after all the tests had
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completed, asked the participants informally about how they thought of the
Comprehension Test; participants specifically pointed out Sentence 12 as the most difficult one. Yet, some participants expressed that they learned this phrase before, so they did not consider it difficult. The reflections of the participants toward Sentence 12 reveal a fact that, without previous learning or memorizing, L2 learners may feel extremely difficult to comprehend an unfamiliar figurative expression, especially when the expression is very different from L1. In addition, the comments also accord with Kellerman‘s (1979) claims that, when learners perceived the distance between two languages, they may decide to avoid risking L1 transferring. Thus, it becomes reasonable that learners may either heavily rely on their stored knowledge or search for other assistances like context clues.
However, with no direct evidence, the above-mentioned discussions of why P3 scored the highest should still be taken as speculations and demand further
investigation. The reflections of the participants did not come from thorough and formal survey, and thus can serve as only a clue. But this clue may shed light on future improvements on EFL teaching and learning of figurative language.
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CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS
This chapter summarizes the major findings of the two tests and answers three research questions at the same time. Based on the results and discussions, theoretical reflections and pedagogical implications are provided. This study closes by pointing out its limitations and suggesting future research in other teaching contexts.
Answers to the Research Questions
Three research questions were raised in Chapter 2, enquiring the effects of two teaching methods—conceptual metaphors and metaphoric mappings—on EFL learners‘ awareness, retention, and comprehension of figurative language learning.
They are answered separately in the following sections.
The First Research Question
The first research question of the study focuses on EFL learners‘ awareness of figurative language. An empirical investigation of two cognitive-oriented
instructions—instruction on conceptual metaphors (CM) or instruction on metaphoric mappings (MM)—are conducted. The results of the Awareness Test show that both the participants of the CM groups and of the MM groups made progress on the Awareness Test after receiving the instructions. The improvements of scores indicate that the participants became more confident of their judgments of recognizing
metaphoric/metonymic expressions; the enhanced certainty also indicates the participants‘ raised awareness of figurative language.
However, the results also show that the participants of the MM groups performed
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significantly better in the posttest than in the pretest while those of the CM groups did not. The significances suggest that instruction on metaphoric mappings were
especially beneficial to the learners‘ awareness in some aspects. The analyses on the participants‘ responses to expressions belonging to different categories on the metaphor-metonymy continuum show that the MM-group participants in the general university performed significantly better in evaluating metonymic-metaphoric and metaphoric expressions, the two categories which were closer to the metaphoric end on the continuum and were considered more abstract in the concepts involved. The findings suggest that instruction on metaphoric mappings can help L2 learners to process abstract concepts and hence can be helpful in noticing and understanding expressions concerning abstract source or target domains.
Moreover, the analyses on the participants‘ responses to body-related metaphoric/metonymic expressions show that the MM-group participants in the general university received significantly higher scores in the posttest in evaluating metaphoric/metonymic expressions containing no bodily descriptions, expressions which were even more abstract than others due to lack of bodily experiences. The finding suggests that instruction on metaphoric mappings can help learners overcome difficulties resulting from abstractness of concepts and insufficiency of embodied experiences, and thus they become more aware of those types of expressions.
To sum up, both instruction on conceptual metaphors and instruction on metaphoric mappings were proved to be beneficial in improving EFL learners‘
awareness of figurative language use. The favorable influences confirm that cognitive-oriented instructions indeed can assist learners to make better sense of figurative language (Ellis, 2006a, 2006b). Moreover, instruction on metaphoric mappings, owing to its structural, systematic, and logical mapping processes, was found to be especially helpful in facilitating learners‘ awareness of expressions
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involving more abstract concepts, such as expressions which involved complicated cross-domain mappings and expressions which were not grounded in embodied experiences.
The Second Research Question
The second research question of the study focuses on EFL learners‘
comprehension of figurative language. L2 learners‘ comprehension of metaphoric and metonymic expressions is believed to be related to their world knowledge, which is governed by their L1 language and culture. Therefore, which instruction is beneficial for utilizing cultural universal concepts as well as bridging gaps between cultural differences is under investigation.
The results of the Comprehension Test show that both the participants of the CM groups and of the MM groups made progress on the test after receiving the
instructions, the progress meaning that the participants offered better and more
comprehensive L1 interpretations to the L2 metaphoric/metonymic expressions. Since the impacts of external factors, such as the fact that whether the participants reviewed the subjects during one-week interval, had been excluded from statistical calculation, the improvements of the scores could be logically interpreted as their improvements of comprehension.
The results again confirm that cognitive-oriented methods work well on L2 figurative language learning. However, the analyses on the participants‘
interpretations of expressions belonging to different possibilities show that, after receiving the instructions, the MM-group participants in both universities got significantly higher scores on interpreting expressions which differ from the participants‘ L1 in literal meanings, figurative meanings, and conceptual
metaphors/metonymies. The finding indicates that the participants benefited from
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instruction on metaphoric mappings in overcoming culturally-different difficulties.
The finding also suggests that metaphoric mappings assist learners in relating their knowledge of the familiar concept to the unfamiliar one. The results thus successfully provide empirical evidence for Kövecses‘ (2001) theoretical assumptions of
metaphoric mappings.
The qualitative analyses on the participants‘ answers again confirm the effects of metaphoric mappings on comprehension. When answering the expressions that had conceptual metaphors similar to L1, both groups of participants were able to utilize the universal concepts to transfer L2 expressions into corresponding L1 terms. The diversity of answers also indicates that the participants equipped cognitive flexibility to express the same meanings in conventional L1 forms. Answers of the term blue in
The qualitative analyses on the participants‘ answers again confirm the effects of metaphoric mappings on comprehension. When answering the expressions that had conceptual metaphors similar to L1, both groups of participants were able to utilize the universal concepts to transfer L2 expressions into corresponding L1 terms. The diversity of answers also indicates that the participants equipped cognitive flexibility to express the same meanings in conventional L1 forms. Answers of the term blue in