Incidencia de las metáforas en la comprensión de textos divulgativos del área de Biología

Abstract

Metaphor is frequently used in science popularization as a strategy to make specialized knowledge accessible to a lay audience. However, there is no empirical evidence of its effectiveness in conveying this kind of knowledge. The aim of this study is to explore the impact of metaphor in the comprehension of popularization written texts on Biology. A written comprehension test was designed, containing 4 excerpts of popularization texts with and without metaphors, and 16 multiple choice questions. The test was applied to 30 second year secondary school Chilean students, and complemented with semi-structured interviews to three students of the sample. Results showed that, at the local level of comprehension, one-correspondence structural metaphors and image metaphors facilitated comprehension. However, at the global level, no evidence of better comprehension in text with metaphors was found. These findings help to assess the effectiveness of conceptual metaphor in specialized knowledge comprehension, and can inform the design of popularization texts with didactic purposes.