Metaphorical Systems and their Implications to Teaching English as a Foreign Language

| March 30, 2004
Title
Metaphorical Systems and their Implications to Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Keywords: No Keyword

Authors
Krishna Kondaiah
Kyoto Municipal Saikyo Senior High School
kondaiahjp@yahoo.co.jp

Bio Data
Occupation: English Teacher
Kyoto Municipal Saikyo Senior High School
Qualifications: M.A. TEFL/TESL Candidate: Ph.D. at Kansai University, Osaka, Japan

Abstract
This paper is about an investigation into metaphorical systems as an approach to teach polysemous words to foreign language learners. Metaphorical usage is prevalent in authentic texts and the foreign language learner when dealing with them is faced with words that carry several meanings. In order to see the prevalence as such and also to see the nature of polysemy in comparison with the first language, two newspaper articles at random were chosen. The articles are both on the same topic, elections, and one is in English and the other in Japanese. The metaphorical systems found in the articles were found to be prevalent in both languages except for a few marked ones. However, the extent of polysemy seemed to differ. The method of translating each article into the other language made comparison of the usage of the polysemous words useful. It is argued that such an effective way of discovering polysemy may facilitate vocabulary learning. In conclusion, this study favors the introduction of an approach that uses metaphorical systems to develop the foreign language learner’s English vocabulary.
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Category: Main Editions