Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
Listening, speaking, reading translating and writing are the five main skills to beacquired by EFL learners. And as one of the five basic skills, writing is a comprehensiveaspect that can reflect one’s ability in a foreign language study. According to College EnglishSyllabus Revision Team(1999)，college English teaching for non-English majors aims atcultivating students’ relatively high abilities in writing and the other four basic skills，英语论文题目，英语论文题目，so thatEnglish will be able to employ as a means to search, deal with and exchange information forthem. In addition, the syllabus has made it clear that college students should acquire theability to communicate in English in written forms．And they should have a clear idea withthe writing requirements according to the syllabus, which include mastering writingtechniques of different styles，having a good command of basic language skills, being able touse some lexical items and set phrases with grammatical rules skillfully, knowing British andAmerican cultures.However, to meet the need of the syllabus writing requirements seems to be anextremely strenuous job as English writing has been a thorn problem for Chinese learners whocomplain that writing is rather a complex productive job. Besides, there are some problemsexisting in their writings that are urgently needed to be solved with an efficient approach.Firstly, a lack of vocabulary volume leads to simple sentences and expressions. Secondly,Chinese learners tend to employ words and sentence structures that are formal but lackcreativity and variations. Thirdly, some expressions are not properly used as a result of thedifferences between the target conceptual system and Chinese conceptual system.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Research
On the basis of metaphoric theories, both from traditional perspective and cognitivescope, this thesis tries to help university non-English learners improve their writings bytraining them with metaphoric thinking. And the study aims at answering the followingquestions.Firstly, what’s the state of metaphoric teaching in this university?Secondly, what’s the state of the non-English majors’ metaphoric competence?Thirdly, will the students’ metaphoric competence get improved by a systematic trainingon metaphoric thinking?Fourthly, will the training on metaphoric thinking do any good to the students’ writings?As a language phenomenon, metaphor is pervasive in human speeches. Cognitivelinguists persist that metaphor is a matter of thought for human beings to experience and learnthe world, so all people have metaphoric competence. In addition, linguists believe thatmetaphoric competence, as well as linguistic competence and communicative competence isindispensable to EEL teaching and learning. According to Zhao (2017), there is a positivecorrelation between students’ metaphoric competence and their output ability. Even thoughmetaphor can be employed by every normal man, or metaphoric competence belongs toeveryone, it stays at lower level. Therefore, a systematic training on metaphoric thinking isobviously necessary, which is of great importance to language learning. For example, Gao(2017) analyzes the feasibility to teach metaphors and to improve learners’ metaphoriccompetence, basing on investing learners’ language studying level, and then g
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