Using Conceptual Metaphors in Teaching Idioms in a Foreign language Context

Abstract

This study aims at exploring the effects of using conceptual metaphors in teaching idioms in a foreign language context. The participants are the first year students of English Language Teaching (ELT) Department of Faculty of Education who take the course “Lexical Competence”. Lesson plans were developed for this purpose. These lesson plans contain activities that aim to teach idiomatic expressions, their meanings and the logic behind them in order to enhance learners’ metaphoric perceptions in the target language. They were implemented in 10 hour-periods (devoted two hours to each lesson plan). The effect of this implementation on language learners’ metaphor awareness and success in understanding the meaning of idioms is evaluated by the use of pre-and post-tests and an open-ended questionnaire. The results obtained show that this implementation enhanced language learners’ metaphor awareness and success in understanding idiomatic expressions, and it can be suggested as an additional channel for learning idioms in a FL vocabulary class. Key words: teaching idiomatic expressions, conceptual metaphors, foreign language classroom