Student Attitude Towards the Application of Conceptual Metaphors to Teaching English Idioms

Abstract

Contrary to the traditional view of idioms, cognitive linguists have demonstrated that the nature of idioms is not arbitrary and rote memorization is not the only way to learn them. The discovery of conceptual metaphor (CM) and its application to teaching idiomatic language in EFL has opened up a new path to more systematic and perceptive learning. However, the learners’ attitudes towards the employment of conceptual metaphors have yet to be thoroughly explored. To address this issue, the current study aimed to investigate the attitudes of 106 Vietnamese university students towards the CM-inspired instruction after a five-week treatment. Two research instruments were employed in this study: an attitudinal questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. The results of the study reveal that the CM-inspired instruction received positive feedback from the students, though the instruction itself exposed some shortcomings that need to be dealt with. To overcome its shortcomings, actual pictures and activities for structural elaboration are proposed to be used concurrently with the CM-inspired instruction.