The study titled "Levels of Processing and Producing Conventional Metaphors by English Foreign Language Learners in Written Language" investigates Saudi female EFL learners' ability to process and produce metaphorical expressions in English. The research aims to examine the extent to which these learners can understand given metaphorical expressions and generate their own metaphors in writing, particularly for describing emotions.
The study employed a mixed-methods approach, using both quantitative and qualitative analysis. A questionnaire containing 30 English metaphorical expressions related to happiness, sadness, anger, fear and love was distributed to 125 Saudi female EFL students to assess their comprehension. Additionally, participants were asked to write paragraphs expressing these five emotions using metaphorical language.
Key findings indicate that the learners demonstrated an overall ability to process and produce conventional metaphors, but with varying levels of proficiency across different emotions. Happiness metaphors were most readily understood and produced, followed by sadness and love. Anger and fear metaphors proved more challenging for the participants. Quantitative analysis revealed that 76% of students successfully processed happiness metaphors, compared to only 43% for fear metaphors. In the writing task, 81.55% of participants produced metaphors for happiness, while only 43.69% generated metaphors for fear.
The researchers conclude that Saudi female EFL learners can comprehend and generate English metaphorical expressions, drawing on conceptual knowledge from both English and Arabic. However, their proficiency varies significantly across emotions, with happiness, sadness and love metaphors being more accessible than those for anger and fear. The study suggests that greater exposure to metaphorical language and explicit instruction may enhance learners' metaphorical competence, particularly for less frequently used emotional metaphors.