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International Journal of Humanity Studies 

 http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/IJHS 

Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia 
 

 

1 
 

USING METAPHOR IN EFL CLASSROOM TO ENHANCE WRITING 

SKILLS: A CASE STUDY 

 

Nguyen Thi Hong Thu 
Hanoi Law University, Viet Nam 

thuvicnguyen@gmail.com 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.030101 

received 19 July 2019; revised 31 July 2019; accepted 27 August 2019 

 

Abstract 

This study discusses the effects of using metaphor in the development of writing 

skill as well as find out the challenges learners may face, then propose the suitable 

suggestions to boost metaphoric awareness and competence in learning English. 

The writer conducted two measuring instruments: pro- and pre-test for two groups 

(control and experimental) to examine the effectiveness of using metaphor in 

writing;  two questionnaires to measure the attitude of the students towards using 

metaphor in writing that was conducted basing on a 5 point Likert-scale. The 

study’s participants were 30 English major students at Hanoi Law University. The 

findings from the study showed that learners with the instruction from teachers on 

metaphor in songs when writing tended to get the better scores than the other 

ones. However, they also showed that although it is important to learn metaphor, a 

lot of challenges still maintain. The paper hopefully helps learners have new 

insight into aspects of figurative language studies and pedagogical applications. 

 

Keywords: metaphor, metaphoric competence, metaphoric awareness, conceptual 

metaphor.   

Introduction 

Foreign language learners have more convenient conditions to practice the 

new language in a multi-cultural context in which learners are exposed to diverse 

authentic English uses. That the opportunities in the communication of multi-

language community increases merges more challenges for learners to acquire the 

figurative language which is different from the literal language. Glucksberg, 

(2001) manifests that one of the most noticeable challenges is learning and using 

figurative language, whose intended meaning does not coincide with the literal 

meanings of the words and sentences used. As a result, a second language learner 

needs to master metaphor to obtain foreign language proficiency. Although the 

metaphor is one of the important figurative aspects of language, it is not easy to 

catch its meaning and use it exactly in each particular context. Lakoff & Johnson, 

(1980) define that figurative language can be approached from two perspectives: 

stylistic and cognitive one in which the writers focus on meaning and thought 

through the conceptual metaphor. In the consideration between language and 

thought, metaphor is considered as “powerful tools for our conceptualization of 



 

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the world” (Ungerer & Schmid, 2006, p. 114).   To acquire what the writers want 

to imply in the words, readers need to go beyond the existed language in their 

mind which helps them to understand the context properly and more deeply. 

Therefore, it is vital to instruct learners to be aware of figurative language 

properly, with the concern about semantic transformation, rather than learn words 

by heart and remember fixed forms mechanically (Boers & Lindstromberg, 2006). 

A large number of educators and researchers have taken interest into exploring 

awareness-raising methods in which theory of conceptual metaphor in Lakoff & 

Johnson’s (1980)  has already brought about beneficial effects on L2 learners’ 

awareness, as well as raising the understanding about theory and classroom 

practice in learning figurative expressions.  

Several writing experts have proposed using metaphors for writing. Metaphor 

spreads so widely and commonly in spoken and written English that it is 

important for learners to accumulate metaphor awareness and so, they can 

enhance the ability to tackle the problems and challenges in learning and 

understanding figurative language (Cooper, 1999). Especially, at the advanced 

level, English major students have more chances to use metaphor in their writing, 

which is considered as a short step in a process to language competence. 

It can be said that the world we live and work in gets around metaphor. In 

other words, metaphor is permeating into everyday life, language, thought and 

action “metaphors are something one lives through” (Kjeldsen, 2009, p.245). 

According to Jakobson (2003), figurative language proved its pervasive power 

through its presence in every field from art, to ordinary life. Metaphor, which is 

traditionally believed to be associated with literary or poetic language, is also an 

ideal new land in the music world for musicians and the language learners to 

discover. Metaphor is a wonderful device for musicians to compose love songs 

through which learners can discover a lot of amazing things and inspire passion 

for language learning process. Nowhere can learners take interest in metaphors as 

much as in songs and poems which create a lot of emotion and motivation.  It is 

music that easily touches the soul and interest of listeners so teaching metaphor 

through songs will be the suitable teaching activity for learners of English. By 

teaching students how to use metaphor in writing, we can lead them to unleash 

their creativity and imagination. Metaphor can also be effective in training 

learners in abstract thought as well as familiarizing them early with literary skills 

they will need later. The pervasiveness of metaphor in all aspects of language 

prompt people to study and research more to achieve linguistic proficiency. The 

present study aims to investigate the importance, challenges, and effects of using 
metaphor in writing skill; learning strategies on their development of metaphoric 

competence. The following two research questions will be addressed:  

1. To what extent do the metaphoric instructions affect English major students’ 
writing skill? 

2. What are the students’ attitudes towards using metaphor in writing? 
Conceptual metaphor 

Seen from the cognitive approach, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson claimed 

that metaphor is “not just a matter of language, but a matter of thought” (1980, 

p7). This was instantiated through how we live and communicate. These writers 



 

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considered language as an “indicator of the nature of our conceptual system”, and 

metaphor features what and how we are aware of and interact with the world 

around us. The term ‘conceptual metaphor’ appeared in order to distinguish with 

metaphor from stylish perspective. Often we treat it only as a stylistic device 

which features each field such as the metaphors of politics, economy, music with, 

but in essence, metaphorical expressions express the way of human thinking and 

reasoning. Metaphor is a way of understanding a concept and according to Lakoff 

and Johnson, meaning and truth depend on the understanding of human. Truth is 

not objective, but depends on context; it relies on a human thinker. Thus, 

metaphor structures what we perceive as truth. Kövecses believes that metaphor 

involves using one conceptual domain to understand another conceptual domain 

(Kövecses, 2002, p4). Cognitive Linguistics give prominence to human cognition 

with the metaphorical thinking which is available in communication.  

Metaphor awareness 

Metaphor shed a light into using cognitive language flexibly and creatively. 

However, to approach nearer the metaphoric competence, students must go 

through a metaphor awareness process. Metaphor awareness is regarded as 

understanding of the knowledge related to metaphorical theory.  Boers (2004) 

gave some benefits learners can get when obtaining metaphor awareness such as 

the ablility to: recognize the importance of metaphor in daily life, clarify source 

and target domains of conceptual metaphors, find out the cultural identity and 

boost intercultural awareness, recognize the cross-linguistic variation metaphors 

(p. 211). Seen from Boers’s theory, metaphor is not only a specific stylistic device 

in some certain fields, but also a common cognitive linguistic form occurring in 

daily life with clearly identifying source domains. More importantly, learners 

must increase their knowledge of culture to realize the cross-cultural differences 

and linguistic variation in both conceptual and linguistic metaphor in their L2. 

According to Boers (2000), to raise metaphoric awareness, there should be a 

plenty of  activities for students to involve in, including inquiring students about 

theoretical metaphor such as: concepts, features and domains, asking students to 

explain  metaphorical themes based on experience, letting students clarify 

individual idiomatic expressions, and taking a notice of historical-cultural 

backgrounds to distinguish ross-cultural differences in the students’ first and 

second language. Kalyuga & M. Kalyuga, 2008 asserted that knowledge of 

conceptual metaphor contributes to the speedy success of learning and boost the 

retention of polysemantic and idiomatic expressions in a second language. 

Moreover, metaphor awareness plays an important role in raising autonomy and 
problem-solving skills. As a result, in every situation and context, students 

themselves can deduce the meanings of metaphorical expressions (Kalyuga & M. 

Kalyuga, 2008, p. 252). Last but not least, metaphor awareness is imperative to 

identify and comprehend new metaphorical expressions in the L2, and it is also a 

basic step to move to the higher standard in practicing metaphor- metaphoric 

competence.  

 

 

 



 

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Metaphoric competence 

To achieve the proficiency in using the second language, beside metaphor 

awareness, metaphoric competence is a dispensable factor. According to Low, 

(1988), metaphoric competence is the ability to accurately interpret and utilize 

metaphors. He also recommended a variety of metaphoric competence raising 

skills, including the ability to form possible meanings, to raise knowledge 

common metaphorical expressions, to realize metaphorical topics and vehicle 

combinations, to interpret and utilize hedges, to increase awareness of ‘socially 

sensitive’ metaphors, to recognize multi-layer metaphors, and interactive 

awareness of metaphor. Littlemore & Low, (2006a) pointed out the correlation 

between person’s “associative fluency,”, the ability to make a wide range of 

connections and “metaphor fluency” or metaphoric competence. Thanks to the 

metaphor competence, language learner can enhance their reasoning and critical 

thinking skills in which one thing will be understood in a variety of concepts and 

by a number of ways. From this, in each situation  or when facing the problems of 

interpreting meaning, learners promptly come up with the various ideas and think 

of multiple source domains and multiple interpretations for a particular 

metaphorical expression. As a result, learner can easily approach the language 

competence. Littlemore and Low (2006a, p. 56)) revealed the difficulties and 

challenges that learners can be confronted, concluding the source and target 

domain analogies, cultural knowledge, intuition and activation of relevant 

networks of features to arrive at a correct interpretation. In short, in learning a 

foreign language, it is important to improve L2 metaphor awareness focusing on 

knowledge of metaphor and metaphor competence related to recognizing skills, 

comprehending skills, analyzing ability and appropriate interpretation. 

Teaching metaphor for writing skill 

In the previous studies, There was a consensus researchers pointed out that  

increasing metaphor competence in using figurative language in writing has been 

correlated to increasing fluency and proficiency in a second language. In a 

research of Littlemore, Krennmayr, Turner, and Turner (2014) by examining two 

hundred essays written by English language learners for Cambridge ESOL 

examinations, they assumed that proficient L2 writers could utilize a variety of 

metaphors in their writing. In addition, metaphor were applied in their writing to 

increase the sophisticated functions. Furthermore, Nacey (2013) manifested the 

challenges in using novel metaphor, of which non-native speakers faced was 

mostly the language error. Furthermore, according to Kathpalia and Carmel 

(2011), cross-cultural competence has an effect on metaphor competence. The 
misunderstanding in inter-cultural communication causes inaccurate interpretation 

toward the metaphors in their writing. Finally, for learner to be easier to gain the 

metaphor competence, MacArthur (2010) recommended incorporation step into 

writing instruction process. They should be assigned to write on similar abstract 

topics, and revising the knowledge of metaphor elements from source domain 

language relevant to the target domain. A number of metaphor awareness- 

enhancing activities are recommended by MacArthur (2010) for learners when 

writing, such as discussing the transfer of metaphor in L1, practicing using the 

user-friendly metalinguistic terms, consulting large electronic corpora not 



 

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depending on bilingual dictionaries too much. Littlemore and Low (2006a, p. 203) 

suggested that students must be shown how to “use figurative language creatively, 

appropriately, and, at times, persuasively” in writing. This helps to enhance 

students writing ability and strengthen their writing in an impressive and 

persuasive way. In short, it is necessary for EFL students make use of appropriate 

metaphorical expressions into their writing.  

These findings indicated that using metaphor partly has a good effect on 

writing skill of students despite the mistakes and problems they faced. As a result 

of fact, teachers somehow introduced metaphor in writing course to increase the 

figurativeness and diversity in students’ papers. However the effectiveness of this 

application depended much on the different factors such as language competence, 

cultural knowledge, and time for practice. 

 

Method 

The current study was conducted in a mixed approach in which the data were 

collected quantitatively. The study was open in the aim of investigating the 

benefits and challenges and effects of using metaphor in writing, then find out 

some strategies to support this. 

Participants  

The study was carried out in a writing classroom with 30 English major 

seniors at Hanoi Law University whose English proficiency was at the 

intermediate to high-intermediate level. They were joining in the writing 3 class in 

the first semester of the third year 

Data Collection Instruments 

Participants’ Essays 

The students in two groups were asked to write two essays about 300 words 

with the same topic in which the draft essay or pre-test was written according to 

the students’ own opinion without any interference from teacher and the final 

essay or pro-test of control group was revised at home and handed in teacher after 

a week meanwhile the post- essay was revised and submitted under the teacher’s 

instruction on metaphors in some songs teacher provided.   

Questionnaire 

Participants were delivered three questionnaires with a variety of items 

related to benefits, challenges, and frequency of using metaphor in writing. 30 

questionnaire sheets collected from students were properly answered, among the 

rest, some had missing items. The questionnaires were designed on a five-point 

rating scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. 

Procedures  

The paper conducted an experiment in the process of writing 3 course. In this 

course, students are asked to practice writing complete essays with different types 

such as narrative, description, opinion. When writing an opinion essay sample, the 

instructor asked the students of two groups to write an essay on the same topic 

“what is your opinion about student love at university?” After submitting the first 

draft, the students in the experimental group were supplied with the knowledge of 

metaphor: definitions of conceptual metaphor, metaphoric mappings from source 

domains to target domains.  Above 25 quotes cited from the famous love songs in 



 

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the late 20th century are introduced to the class as metaphoric examples with the 

explanation from the teacher to help students figure out metaphoric expressions of 

love and imagine how “love” is understood in poems and songs. The teacher 

instructed students to read and complete some handouts including the tasks related 

to metaphor such as identifying metaphor in several songs and poems and to circle 

the idiomatic expressions used in them and explain the metaphorical expressions 

basing on the teacher’s instruction. After that, students themselves were suggested 

brainstorming the images of love and idiomatic expressions in their own mind. At 

that time, students had to clarify metaphoric mappings for the metaphoric 

expressions of love such as love is a journey, love is fire, love is a concrete thing, 

etc. The handouts were collected back to the instructor to check after the students 

completed the exercise. At the end of the period, the students in EG were told to 

revise their first draft at home and were assigned to create as many metaphoric 

expressions as possible. They submitted both the original and the revised essays a 

week later. Meanwhile, the students in the control group were also asked to 

rewrite the essay at home without any instruction on metaphor from teachers. The 

essays were then analyzed and scored by the instructor to assess how the students 

used metaphoric expressions and to measure the effects of using in writing. Both 

students‘ pre-tests and post-tests were graded under 5 evaluation criteria namely 

task fulfillment, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation, using a 10- 

point scale to assess the students ‘writing performance.  

Finding and Discussion 

Effects of using metaphor instructions in writing.   

To answer the first research question, the writer found the results of the 

essays of two groups. The results of pre-test and post-test of the control class were 

analyzed then compared and summarized in Table 1 as follows:          

Pre-test and post-test of the control group 

 

Table 1: The comparison between CG students‘pre-test and post-test 

 

In this subsection, the results of the pre-test and post-test of the control group 

were analyzed and compared to find whether rewriting at home impacted writing 

ability for students. As can be seen in Table 1, the mean score of the post-test was 

6.5 (out of  10) that is higher than 6.25 of the pre-test. It was easy to calculate that 

the decline in the mean score between the post-test and pre-test was 0.25, which 

implied that there was a little improvement in the writing of the control class after 

rewriting at home. Also, the result of the paired-samples T-test showed that the 

critical value of p for a two-tailed test and there was a significant difference in the 

results of the post-test and pre-test with p-value   (0.078) is higher than 0.05. 

 Pre-test Post-test 

Control 

group 

Number  Mean  STdev Number  Mean  STdev 

15 6.25 0.767 15 6.5 0.863 

p-value  0.078     



 

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These findings have proved that rewriting the second essay has very little impacts 

on writing ability for students without using metaphor. 

Experimental Group students’ pre-test and post-test results  

Table 2: The comparison between EG students‘pre-test and post-test results 

 Pre-test Post-test 

Experimental Group N Mean  STdev N Mean  STdev 

 15 6.0 0.702 15 7.25 0.658 

p-value  0.000     

 

In this subsection, the results of the pre-test and post-test of the experimental 

group were analyzed and   compared   to   find   whether   that revising  at home 

with the using metaphor in paper  has  impacts on  writing   ability   for   students . 

The table 4 indicated that there was a significant improvement in writing 

performance between the pre-test and post-test of the experimental group. 

Specifically, the mean score of the post-test rose noticeably from 6.0 to 7.25 

points in comparison with  that of the pre-test. Furthermore, the p- value between 

the post-test and pre-test was 0.000 that is much smaller than 0.05, which means 

that the difference between the post-test and pre-test results reached a statistically 

significant level. These findings have proved that using metaphor has a significant 

impact on students’ writing ability.   

 

Test results between the pre-tests of control and experimental classes  

The results of the pre-test and post-test of the two classes were analyzed and 

compared by using Independent-samples T-test  to reconfirm the starting point in 

the performance in the pre-test of the two classes before the experiment; and to 

find the effectiveness of using metaphor in writing of the experimental class 

compared with that of the control class after   the intervention. Table 3 displays 

the descriptive statistics as well as the comparison of the pre-tests of both groups. 

 

Table 3: Comparison of the pre-tests of both groups 

 Pre- test 

 Number Mean Steve 
Control group 20 6.25 0.767 

Experimental Group 20 6.0 0.702 

P-value   0.403  

 

It can be clearly seen from Table 3, the mean scores of the EG students and 

CG students in the pre-test are 6.0 and 6.25 (out of 10) respectively. The 

Independent-samples T-test shows p-value 0.403 that is higher than 0.05. This 

means there is a similarity between the mean scores of both groups. These 

findings indicated that there is no significant difference in the results of the pre-

tests between the CG and EG. It has been implied that before the intervention of 

treatment, students of the CG and EG were at a similar level of writing skill. 

Furthermore, as shown in Table 3, the standard deviation (SD) of EG is 0.702 

while that of CG is 0.767, which means that the scores of EG students were more 

various than those of CG students. 



 

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Descriptive statistics of post-test of both groups 

Table 4. Comparison of the post-tests of both group 

 Post- test 

 Number Mean Steve 
Control Group 20 6.5 0.863 

Experimental Group 20 7.25 0.658 

P-value   0.007  

SMD  0.869  

               

Table 4 shows a remarkable difference in the mean scores of the post-tests 

between EG and CG. From the table above it can be seen that the mean scores of 

the EG students (7.25 out of 10) are higher than those of CG (6.5). Also, the 

Independent-samples T-test shows that p-value is 0.007 that is smaller than 0.05. 

These values indicate that the difference between the two groups reached a 

statistical significance. Also, with SMD (0.7<0.869<0.9), based on Cohen’s d 

effect size we can see that the treatment has a great effect on practice writing of 

the students. It could be concluded that there is a statistically significant 

difference in writing between the two groups in using metaphor. In other words, 

what could be inferred from the findings above at the end of the intervention is 

that both the experimental group and control group showed the progress in their 

writing but the improvement of the EG students who received the treatment of 

metaphor application was greater than the CG students. 

 

Students’ attitudes towards using metaphor in songs in writing 

To answer the second research question, the writer collected the data and 

showed them in figure 1, 2, and table 5. 

Figure 1 describes the frequency of using metaphor in writing from 

participants. 20 % of respondents replied that they do not use metaphor in writing. 

40% responded “seldom,” while 33% of students said that metaphor is sometimes 

used in writing and only 7% considered metaphor as a type of frequent figurative 

language in writing classroom. It can be seen from the data that although these 

students are the intermediate or upper-intermediate English major seniors, few 

metaphors are used in their writing frequently. Even, the number of students 

“never used” counts up to 20%.



 

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20%

40%

33%

7% 0%

Frequency of using metaphor in writing

never Seldom sometimes frequently always

Figure 1: Frequency of using metaphor in writing. 

 

Benefits of Using Metaphor in Writing 

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Metaphor
can make

your writing
more

figurative
and

interesting

Make your
mind more

creative and
imaginative

Increase the
culture

knowledge

Use language
more flexibly
and naturally

Increase the
number of
vocabulary

Enhance
critical

thinking

DA

A

UNC

D

SD

Figure 2: Benefits of using metaphor in writing. 

 

It can be seen from Figure 2 that the respondents took a high interest in 

expressing their views and perceptions towards the benefits of using metaphor in 

writing. Most of the students agreed that using metaphor in writing brings about a 

lot of significances supporting them in their learning. Related to the performance 

of students in classroom with using metaphor in writing, the data shows that more 

than half of the students agreed and strong agreed that using metaphor in writing 

can make your writing more figurative and interesting, make your mind more 

creative and imaginative, increase the cultural knowledge, use language more 

flexibly and naturally, increase the number of vocabulary and enhance critical 

thinking while 2%, 0% or lower reveal their disagreements with those statements.  

 

 

 

 



 

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Challenges of using metaphor in writing 

 

Table 5: Challenges of using metaphor in writing 

 

Challenges SA A UD DA 

SD

A 

Little understanding of words meanings  5 6 15 4 0 

Lack of familiar metaphorical expressions in 

their L2 10 17 3 0 0 

Difference in variation  for different conceptual 

metaphors preferred 7 20 2 1 0 

Variation of the similar metaphor of different  

languages 6 12 4 4 0 

Lack of vocabulary to use metaphor 7 15 7 1 0 

Differences in culture lead to misunderstanding 9 15 6 0 0 

Lack of cultural knowledge to interpret 

metaphor 8 17 6 0 0 

Individuals’ creative skill, imagination or ideas 5 6 15 4 0 

 

The data above shows that most students encounter the challenges in using 

metaphor in which the vocabulary, culture and preference problems take majority 

with 23, 25, 27 students. Most of the students agreed that they have these 

difficulties in using and learning metaphor. This can explain the reason why 

students do not use it frequently. 

Intending to investigate the effects of using metaphor in writing and the 

writer conducted experimental tests namely pre-test and post-test. The findings 

from data shows that   The score of pre-test and post-test of each group (post-test 

> pre-test) revealed that there is an increase in writing ability of students when 

they had time to rewrite the essay at home and especially with the instructions on 

metaphor in songs from teacher, the students of experimental group had a 

significant increase in score. These findings indicated that using figurative 

language in writing had a certain effect on the result of essays. These findings go 

in line with the results of the previous studies on the effect of using metaphor in 

writing by different researchers, MacArthur (2010), Turner (2014) and Boers 

(2000). In addition, it is clear from the data that the results of pre-test of control 

and experimental group are similar but after applying the new treatment, the score 

of post-test of experimental was higher than the one of the control group. This 

means there was a remarkable increase in the writing performance of experimental 

students. In short, these findings are a clear answer to the first research question 

that using metaphor have a positive effect on the writing for English major 

students to some extension. 

To identify the attitudes of students towards using and learning metaphor, the 

writer conducted a series of questionnaires related to frequency, benefits, and 

challenges of using metaphor. The data showed that although students do not use 

metaphor as frequently as expected, they realized a lot of benefits from using 

metaphor. That is to say, metaphor plays an important role in improving the 



 

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writing performance. However, they had a lot of difficulties when using metaphor 

such as lack of vocabulary, cultural knowledge, and creativeness.  

 

Conclusion 
This study is aimed to investigate the effects of using metaphor in the 

development of writing skill as well as find out the challenges learners may face, 

then propose the suitable suggestions to boost metaphoric awareness and 

competence in learning English. The findings from the rerearch coincides with the 

theory and hypothesis the previous researchers such as Littlemore, Krennmayr, 

Turner, and Turner (2014), Nacey (2013), MacArthur (2010) gave and asserted 

that metaphor has a good effect on writing skill, it could enhance language 

profiency but there are also certain challenges in using metaphor flexibly and 

effectively. The results of the study suggest students may need more class 

instruction to develop their metaphoric competence because students face a lot of 

challenges in using metaphor.... When studying one language, it is necessary not 

only to study vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, speaking or listening, but 

also to know how to use language naturally. Metaphor is specially used in daily 

life, in any languages, and many situations. In both spoken language and literature 

language, metaphor can frequently appear. As soon as understanding the message 

of each metaphor in songs and literal works, learners can easily communicate with 

native speakers naturally or use metaphor flexibly in their own writing. So, 

metaphor plays an important role in improving reading and writing skills. It is 

necessary to write paragraphs containing a metaphor appropriately as possible. 

Learners should use metaphors in their own writing to train their language 

competence better. As students become aware of their own metaphors for learning 

they can recognize how their language competence progresses.  

In addition to the above skills, learning literature cannot lack using metaphor. 

The use of metaphor in poetry is one of the most important aspects of poetic style 

that must be mastered. Despite being the major students of English, they have few 

chances to practice using metaphor in writing. They still get a loss to understand 

and analyze metaphor in song or literary works. Therefore, when learning English 

literature, they must try their best to identify, analyze and use metaphor steps by 

steps from sentence to text. More importantly, teachers should spend enough time 

and create appropriate methods to teach them to learn it in the best way. 

Encouraging students to use metaphors will help them improve their writing 

ability and produce interesting pieces that others will enjoy reading. However, 

there are activities that teachers can use to help students understand metaphors 
and to inspire the use of these literary devices. Teachers, also, should provide 

students with knowledge of culture. 

Once learners are able to have their metaphors and use them to promote the 

ideas flexibly, they will become metaphor masters. If the learners know to take 

advantages of the benefits of using metaphor, they can improve all the skills in 

learning a second language. Conceptual metaphor provides students with the 

possibility of understanding one concept in terms of another. From a domain, they 

can refer to many various domains by the metaphorical expressions. As a result, 

they will broaden their vocabulary and make them more productive. Learners 



 

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should know what a metaphor is if they are studying examples of metaphors in 

text. Simply knowing the definition, however, is not sufficient. They should be 

able to identify examples of metaphors in the text on their own. They should be 

able to explain the purpose of the metaphor and analyze how it contributes to the 

theme of the work. Thus, applying conceptual metaphors in learning language will 

help students improve their reading comprehension a lot. 

References 
Boers, F. (2000a). Enhancing metaphoric awareness in specialized reading. 

English for Specific Purposes, 19, 137-147.  

Boers, F. (2000b). Metaphor awareness and vocabulary retention. Applied 

Linguistics, 21(4), 553-571. 

Boers, F., & Lindstromberg, S. (2006) Cognitive linguistic applications in second 

or foreign language instruction: rationale, proposals, and evaluation. In G. 

Kristiansen, M. Achard, R. Dirven & F. J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez (Eds.), 

Cognitive linguistics: Current applications and future perspective (pp.305-

355). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Boers, F. (2004). Expanding learners’ vocabulary through metaphor awareness: 

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