The importance and usage of metaphors in Efl classes for students

Metaphor is a fundamental mechanism of human cognition, and metaphoricallinguistic expressions are pervasive in everyday conversations and written texts.Through metaphor we can talk of abstract and complex concepts and understand them in terms of more concrete and salient ones. The concreteness and image ability of metaphors make them a suitable and perfect vehicle for conveying abstract or complex meanings, and the lexicon of languages is rich in single words and multi-word expressions based on metaphor, such as idioms, phrasal verbs, idiomatic phrases, and collocations. The purpose of this study is to discuss about metaphors in Efl classes for students. Metaphor and other types of figurative language are an important part of how people communicate on a daily basis. Beyond the noun-copula-noun structure of this specific lesson, other metaphorical extensions are also a possibility. The results show that Metaphors not only include crucial information about teachers’ growth as professionals but also reveal their educational values, beliefs, and principles. Personal beliefs play a significant role in teachers’ classroom practice, which are the result of their self-construction. The results of the study indicate that metaphor awareness of understanding idiomatic expressions is highly significant in foreign language. Metaphors we use reflect our thinking and feelings. Furthermore, they influence our behavior. Verbalizing and sharing the perceptions of the educational reality through metaphors provides a vantage point from where we can re-evaluate our previous conceptions of the educational practice. In most language courses, learning and teaching a new language requires a lot of time and mental effort. metaphor plays an important role in teaching language especially in teaching time expressions, preposition, grammar and also vocabulary. Teachers should notice that sometimes some metaphors have different meanings in different cultures; consequently, teachers are required to draw students’ attention to these kinds of differences. Although teaching metaphor may cause some problems and make students confused, using metaphor is useful and necessary in teaching and learning process.

کلیدواژه ها:

: metaphors ، Efl classes ، students