Metaphor awareness as a facilitator of lexical retention in Polish secondary school EFL classrooms
Metaphor awareness as a facilitator of lexical retention in Polish secondary school EFL classrooms

Summary/Abstract: This study has examined whether enhancing learners' metaphor awareness could improve the retention of idiomatic expressions in Polish L2 English learners. Sixty-nine students from two secondary schools divided into four groups participated in the study: one experimental (n = 20) and one control (n = 21) from School 1 and one experimental (n = 15) and one control (n = 13) from School 2. During instruction, the control groups received vocabulary notes with items organised along functional lines, e.g., to describe acute and sudden anger. The experimental groups received vocabulary notes with the same items, but organised under the headings of conceptual metaphors, e.g., anger as fire. All of the groups were tested twice immediately after the instruction and a month later. The immediate post-instruction test showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups from School 1. Yet, no such result was observed in School 2. The delayed post-test revealed no statistically significant difference between groups in either of the schools. These results suggest that enhancing metaphor awareness of students can lead to improved short-term retention of idioms, but a single instance of metaphor-based instruction is not enough to offer long-term effect on vocabulary learning.

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