The Impact of Cultural Metaphors on Learning Effectiveness in English as a Foreign Language Curriculum

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the benefits of teaching culture through metaphor in the EFL, English as a Foreign Language, classroom. Chinese learners of English would be expected to enhance their communication skills and use metaphorical insights as a way of developing new strategies when they are exposed to this cultural information in their own culture and the target culture such as in the USA. The researcher also expected that EFL or CFL, Chinese as a foreign language, learners could internalize this information and develop strategies that would enable them not only to facilitate communication with speakers the target language but that this information would empower them to use this cultural knowledge when communicating with native speakers of their own language (L1) since cultural metaphors are frequently and widely used in life. With a view to provide EFL teachers at university level and the EFL educational organizations where Chinese is a dominant language in the society with alternative perspectives in EFL education, findings from the research questions follows. The impact of this new teaching method, CLTCMP, Communicative Language Teaching with Cultural Metaphor Plan, on EFL learners’ English reading comprehension, cultural metaphor understanding, the efficacy of the CLTCMP as measured from the students’ performance and the perspectives of the EFL learners and teachers regarding their experiences and reflections on EFL learning and teaching in Taiwan is summarized.