Developing Metaphorical Awareness and Competence in Chinese as a Foreign Language through Concept-Based Instruction
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| Title: | Developing Metaphorical Awareness and Competence in Chinese as a Foreign Language through Concept-Based Instruction |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Liu, Shuyuan (ORCID |
| Source: | Foreign Language Annals. Fall 2020 53(3):478-504. |
| Availability: | Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 27 |
| Publication Date: | 2020 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Research |
| Descriptors: | Figurative Language, Mandarin Chinese, Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Instructional Effectiveness, Concept Teaching, Competence |
| DOI: | 10.1111/flan.12483 |
| ISSN: | 0015-718X |
| Abstract: | Due to the importance of metaphorical capacity for L2 learners, metaphor instruction is increasingly considered a crucial part of language education. To contribute to the still growing literature, the current study reports a project of teaching Chinese animal metaphors to learners of Mandarin as a foreign language, following the framework of systemic-theoretical instruction for concept-based instruction (CBI). Given the conceptual nature of metaphors and their role in the conceptual understanding of a language, a concept-based approach is therefore hypothesized as relevant in the development of learner's metaphorical capacity. By analyzing the surveys, coursework, and assignments completed by and the audio recordings of instructional sessions conducted with three focal participants, this research shows that CBI is effective in growing the learners' metaphorical awareness and competence, despite their difference in general language proficiency and the seemingly short period of instruction. As such, this research reveals both the mechanisms of L2 metaphor learning and the effects of CBI on the practice of L2 metaphor instruction. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2020 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1269030 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwHQXgHe5xLmADM5hvgMMDdPAAAA4zCB4AYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHSMIHPAgEAMIHJBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDAppRS-IbTVxhRu6JwIBEICBm-OCvZlIJcde1qpOOm13ZBeKqKQr0Hucob9IfZKQ_Mg9k_v8IpxLjupZDZDGp-4LbDCB4yyTFvbBA6e4K9m-d8RkBRXOYpleGwlRC2eOvEe_dUkW5p-XySval0aVog2KTmADnnu42tnbaxfZZ9M1h4z2UmtsIr1Q3zaQaZqScOZTiC5hhK-Y_Sky1LnyOO6_VjdbKo2slbRlFNRA Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0146139009;fla01sep.20;2020Oct01.02:18;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0146139009-1">Developing metaphorical awareness and competence in Chinese as a foreign language through concept‐based instruction </title> <p>Due to the importance of metaphorical capacity for L2 learners, metaphor instruction is increasingly considered a crucial part of language education. To contribute to the still growing literature, the current study reports a project of teaching Chinese animal metaphors to learners of Mandarin as a foreign language, following the framework of systemic‐theoretical instruction for concept‐based instruction (CBI). Given the conceptual nature of metaphors and their role in the conceptual understanding of a language, a concept‐based approach is therefore hypothesized as relevant in the development of learner's metaphorical capacity. By analyzing the surveys, coursework, and assignments completed by and the audio recordings of instructional sessions conducted with three focal participants, this research shows that CBI is effective in growing the learners' metaphorical awareness and competence, despite their difference in general language proficiency and the seemingly short period of instruction. As such, this research reveals both the mechanisms of L2 metaphor learning and the effects of CBI on the practice of L2 metaphor instruction.</p> <p>The Challenge: The development of metaphorical competence, that is, the ability to use and understand metaphors, is essential to L2 education. However, qualitative research on teaching metaphors of languages other than English is scant. How can an explicit, systematic pedagogical approach facilitate individual students' learning of L2 metaphors? How may learners at different proficiency levels react to the instruction?</p> <p>Keywords: pedagogy/instruction; Chinese (Mandarin); foreign/second language learning; cultural competence; case study; sociocultural theory; metaphor</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-2">INTRODUCTION</hd> <p>Foreign language (FL) education has the potential to develop the linguistic as well as cultural competence of the next generation of global citizens participating in intercultural interaction with respect, understanding, and acute self‐awareness (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages [ACTFL]). Figurative instruction, among other things, is an integral part of FL learning (Andreou &amp; Galantomos, 2008), as metaphors are rooted in and key to language, culture, and cognition (Kövecses, 2005; Lakoff &amp; Johnson, 1980). They represent crucial conceptual and cultural models in a linguistic community that a language learner should be able to appropriate (Lantolf, 1999). The term "metaphoric(al) competence" has even been coined to refer to a speaker's ability to use and understand metaphors, usually in a second or foreign language, and the links between such competence and general L2 proficiency have been emphasized (Littlemore, 2001a; Littlemore &amp; Low, 2006).</p> <p>Despite the substantial amount of research on metaphors, the teaching of metaphor in FL education has only begun to attract attention (e.g., Boers, 2000a, 2004; Chen &amp; Lai, 2015; Lantolf &amp; Bobrova, 2014). Most prior studies focused on English as a foreign language; however, as metaphors may differ systematically from language to language, more languages should be examined (Kövecses, 2005). Moreover, while many have investigated the connection between metaphorical competence and language proficiency (e.g., Aleshtar &amp; Dowlatabadi, 2014; Littlemore, 2001a; Littlemore, Krennmayr, Turner, &amp; Turner, 2013), few studies have examined how students across different levels learn L2 metaphors, and whether factors like general proficiency and learning history may influence the process as well as the product of learning. Finally, while some identified the instruction method adopted in their research (e.g., Boers, 2000a, 2000b; Chen &amp; Lai, 2015; Lantolf &amp; Bobrova, 2014), most tended to report only the quantitative results of their research. Few analyzed the qualitative aspect of the process, which may also reveal much about FL education.</p> <p>Considering these gaps, the present study aims to shed light on the teaching and learning of L2 metaphors. It reports on the implementation of a concept‐based pedagogical approach in sociocultural theory (SCT; Lantolf &amp; Thorne, 2006) to teach Chinese animal metaphors to three English‐speaking learners. A concept‐based approach centers around the mediated internalization of domain‐specific concepts embodied in a language; it is, thus, deemed appropriate to develop L2 metaphorical competence since metaphors usually involve systematic mappings between embodied as well as abstract concepts and are foundational to the conceptual understanding of a language (Lakoff &amp; Johnson, 1980). Animal metaphors were chosen as the focus since animal expressions in Chinese have been shown to contribute much to idiomatic and figurative language, and commonly adopted animal metaphors may vary cross‐linguistically (Hsieh, 2004, 2005, 2006). Moreover, animal expressions reflect the values of a culture (Hsieh, 2004) and enable speakers to express emotions and evaluations (Hsieh, 2005; Wei &amp; Wong, 2012). By teaching Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners a set of animal expressions and the underlying metaphors, this study explores how the concept‐based approach influences the development of metaphorical competence and how SCT may provide insights into the learners' conceptual and language development in their learning process.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-3">LITERATURE REVIEW</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0146139009-4">Concept‐based instruction (CBI)</hd> <p>CBI focuses on the systemic instruction and internalization of explicit and complete domain‐specific knowledge categorized in SCT as <emph>scientific concepts</emph> (Lantolf, 2011). According to SCT, "all human psychological processes (so‐called higher mental processes) are mediated by psychological tools such as language, signs, and symbols" (Karpov &amp; Haywood, 1998, p. 27). It delineates two types of symbolic mediation: <emph>self‐regulation</emph>, which is the ability to monitor self‐performance, and <emph>concept‐based regulation</emph> through the mediational means of cognitive tools in specific "subject domains" (p. 28). SCT also distinguishes between <emph>spontaneous concepts</emph>, which derive from everyday experience and are susceptible to incomplete or even erroneous understanding, and <emph>scientific concepts</emph>, which are explicit, domain‐specific, and generalizable across a wide range of situations (Lantolf, 2011; Vygotsky, 1986). Language, for example, embodies "the most pervasive concepts" including lexical, figurative, and grammatical meanings (Lantolf, 2011, p. 32).</p> <p>Regarding L2 conceptual development, the most commonly followed pedagogical theoretical framework was devised by Gal'perin (1970, 1989), who built upon the foundation of SCT, formulated the theory of systemic theoretical instruction (STI), a term used interchangeably with CBI in this article (Lantolf &amp; Poehner, 2014). Lantolf (2011) summarized the five phases of Gal'perin's design implemented in the most recent CBI‐L2 studies: (a) verbal explanation of the generalizable scientific concepts, (b) materialization of the concept using the <emph>schema for orienting basis of action</emph> (SCOBA), (c) communicative activities using materialized tools as mediation to accomplish specific goals, (d) verbalization of the concepts, and (e) internalization of the concepts. A CBI‐based pedagogical design differs from traditional "rules of thumb" (Krashen, 1981, p. 114) or form‐based instruction as it foregrounds the meaning‐based understanding of systematic language concepts (Lantolf &amp; Poehner, 2014). In contrast, a "rules of thumb" approach presents learners with categorical rules for language tests and immediate use in textbook‐like contexts, without explaining the underlying concepts. These are often incomplete and erroneous in authentic communicative activities (Lantolf, 2011).</p> <p>Among the pedagogical phases of a CBI approach, the SCOBA of the instructional design is a central mediational tool facilitating the appropriation of concepts and gradually integrating with learners' Orienting Basis of an Action (OBA), a term coined by Gal'perin (1989, 1992a, 1992b, 1992c, 1992d) to define all the necessary sets of orienting elements that aid the learner in performing an action. While the OBA signifies learners' actual orienting basis and may change given appropriate instruction, the SCOBA becomes the orienting basis to be adopted, which leads to the appropriate execution of an action (Haenen, 2001) and usually remains fixed. SCOBA incorporates the essential condition to perform (verbal) action appropriately, and it is an external aid that typically consists of models, flowcharts, diagrams, or any other nonlinguistic but relevant representation of the concept. Working with a SCOBA indicates that the action is conducted at the materialized level.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-5">The formation of mental actions</hd> <p>According to Arievitch and Haenen (2005), the core concerns of Gal'perin's theory from which the STI model developed reside in "how human mental activity is formed out of the transformation of 'external' activity" (p. 157). The formation of mental actions, according to Gal'perin, is stepwise and follows three basic levels of abstraction—material, verbal, and mental levels, as summarized in the following table by Arievitch and Haenen (Table 1).</p> <p>1 TableGal'perin's three basic levels of action, summarized from Arievitch and Haenen (2005)</p> <p> <ephtml> &lt;table&gt;&lt;thead valign="bottom"&gt;&lt;tr valign="bottom"&gt;&lt;th&gt;Level&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Description&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/thead&gt;&lt;tbody valign="top"&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;At the material level&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Learners act upon concrete, physical objects or their material representations.&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;At the verbal level&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Learners' actions are based on overt or covert speech; objects or their representations give way to word concepts and speech; verbal actions are to meet communicative or socio&amp;#8208;interactional requirements.&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;At the mental level&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Learners act upon pure conceptual thoughts; the actions "are kept in mind."&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt; </ephtml> </p> <p>Arievitch and Haenen (2005) suggest that a "fully fledged mental action" will be formed after passing through these three levels (p. 159) and that in real learning circumstances, Gal'perin's stepwise process of forming mental actions can be best illustrated as a spiral. That is, the steps are not linear, but might be abbreviated, merged, or skipped, depending on variations in learning tasks, learning history, and the like. Thus, the spiral cycle underlines the gradual improvement in the quality of mental action, as it goes back and forth from the end‐stage to the beginning, starting new cycles of further internalizing the mental action, as illustrated in Figure 1.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/FLA/01sep20/flan12483-fig-0001.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="flan12483-fig-0001.jpg" title="1 The spiral model of the formation of mental actions (Arievitch &amp; Haenen, 2005)" /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0146139009-7">Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)</hd> <p>According to the CMT (Lakoff &amp; Johnson, 1980), a metaphor not only constitutes a trope in rhetoric but also facilitates the understanding of many basic concepts and forms the foundation of human cognition. It involves a systematic mapping from the source domain, usually the more embodied concepts, to the target domain, usually the more abstract ones. In the metaphor TIME IS MONEY,[<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref1">1</reflink>] for example, the relatively tangible concept of money is employed as the source domain to conceptualize the more abstract concept of time.</p> <p>Under this framework, conceptual metaphors are distinguished from linguistic metaphors (Lakoff, 1993), and primary metaphors from complex metaphors (Grady, 1997, 1999). Conceptual metaphors represent structured cognitive mappings between two conceptual domains, while linguistic metaphors consider specific linguistic devices in a language (Lakoff, 1993; Littlemore &amp; Low, 2006). For example, LOVE IS A JOURNEY is a generalized, conceptual metaphor, in which LOVE and JOURNEY refer to abstract concepts, rather than specific expressions. In contrast, the clause <emph>we are at a crossroads</emph> per se is an instance of a linguistic metaphor because the expression is more fixed and language‐specific.</p> <p>Primary metaphors refer to metaphorical mappings acquired via bodily experience and are more basic and cross‐linguistic (Grady, 1997), such as MORE IS UP. They can be combined into a complex metaphor that is not necessarily motivated by the bodily experience. For instance, AN ARGUMENT IS A BUILDING is a complex metaphor that contains at least two primary metaphors, which are (a) LOGICAL STRUCTURE IS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE and (b) PERSISTING IS REMAINING ERECT (Grady, 1997). Such complex metaphors are more likely to vary cross‐linguistically (Grady, 1999; Kövecses, 2005) and may pose difficulty for L2 learners (Littlemore, 2001b).</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-8">Metaphor in L2 development</hd> <p>Many have highlighted the importance of developing the awareness of, and the ability to use as well as understand, metaphors in L2 education (e.g., Danesi, 1986, 1993; Lantolf &amp; Bobrova, 2014; Littlemore, 2001a; Littlemore &amp; Low, 2006). For example, Danesi (1986) suggested that learners' ability to metaphorize in L2 is essential to their capability of conducting effective communication in the target language. Lantolf and Bobrova (2014) also contended that metaphorical capacity is key to advanced levels of L2 proficiency.</p> <p>By distinguishing "metaphoric competence" from other language abilities, scholars have proposed specific definitions for this competence. Littlemore (2001a) defined metaphorical competence as a combination of four weakly related parts, including the originality of metaphor production, the ability to find meaning in metaphor, the speed in finding the meaning in metaphor, and the fluency of metaphor interpretation. Littlemore and Low (2006, p. 269), extending this definition, characterized metaphorical competence as including "the knowledge of, and ability to use, metaphor" along with the "skills needed to work effectively with metaphor" (Low, 1988).</p> <p>One important research topic is the link between metaphorical competence and general proficiency. In general, most studies have shown that the more proficient L2 learners appear to be more metaphorically competent (Aleshtar &amp; Dowlatabadi, 2014; Littlemore, 2001a; Littlemore, Krennmayr, Turner, &amp; Turner, 2013). Much attention has been paid to the contributions of metaphorical competence to the development of general language proficiency or communicative ability (Lantolf &amp; Bobrova, 2014; Littlemore &amp; Low, 2006); however, relatively few studies have examined the influence of general proficiency on the development of metaphorical competence.</p> <p>On the other hand, research arguing for the notion of conceptual fluency as an inherent component of metaphorical competence seems to separate conceptual fluency, which concerns the knowledge of how "language reflects or encodes its concepts on the basis of metaphorical structuring" (Danesi, 1992, p. 490), from verbal fluency, which is more generalized and involves the learner's grammatical and communicative ability. That is, verbally fluent L2 speakers may not necessarily display equally high conceptual fluency. Nevertheless, little is known about how learners across proficiency levels learn new metaphorical expressions and whether L2 proficiency influences the learning of new metaphors.</p> <p>Another relevant area is the influence of explicit instruction on learning L2 metaphors. Most seem to agree that metaphors are teachable and that explicit instruction is essential to enhancing the learners' metaphorical competence (e.g., Boers, 2000b; Chen &amp; Lai, 2015; Lantolf &amp; Bobrova, 2014; Pérez, 2017). However, as reviewed by Lantolf and Thorne (2006), Hays and McCagg (1999) found no significant difference between participants who received explicit instruction on metaphors and those who did not. More research is needed to investigate whether metaphors are indeed teachable to learners at different proficiency levels, given appropriate pedagogy.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-9">METHODOLOGY</hd> <p>Situated in the SCT‐informed framework of CBI (Gal'perin, 1970, 1989; Lantolf, 2011), this study adopted a multiple case study design to qualitatively explore CFL learners' developmental processes of metaphorical awareness/competence regarding Chinese animal metaphors. In brief, the central principle of SCT posits that the dialectical unity between human's biological mental processes and socially appropriated "auxiliary stimuli" (Lantolf &amp; Poehner, 2014, p. 8), including physical and psychological tools, gives rise to the development of human consciousness. Among the types of auxiliary stimuli, language, along with the concepts embodied in linguistic signs, is the most powerful and ubiquitous psychological tool that mediates the higher forms of human cognitive development and activity.</p> <p>To disentangle such dialectic unity from which human consciousness arises and develops, Vygotsky (1978) proposed that the analytical methodology must be genetic (i.e., historical) to uncover the dynamic and historical processes of development. A genetic approach studies "the process as it changes" (Lantolf &amp; Poehner, 2014, p. 24), revealing both the source and the result of development. Vygotsky's genetic method observes human developmental processes at four interconnected levels: phylogenesis (history of the species), sociocultural history (evolution of human cultures), ontogenesis (individual's life history), and microgenesis (developmental changes throughout short periods).</p> <p>Applying to the educational‐developmental processes of CBI, the ontogenesis and, especially, the microgenesis are relevant to observing the influence and construction of individuals' educational histories and the processes of learners' developmental changes unfolding "right before one's eyes" (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 61). Therefore, in contrast to research methodologies that quantify learner variables, this study primarily adopts a qualitative case study design to investigate the learners' developmental processes of mental actions. Moreover, a case study design affords opportunities for a close examination of the local specificity of changes (Dyson &amp; Genishi, 2005), as well as the dialectical "educational praxis" (Lantolf &amp; Poehner, 2014, p. 63) of teaching‐learning enacted within the idiosyncratic cases of each individual's needs and histories. Previous CBI research (e.g., Kim, 2013; van Compernolle, 2012) frequently drew on the interpretive power of qualitative case studies and focused on a microgenetic analysis of individual learners' developmental processes.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-10">Research questions</hd> <p>The overarching research question concerns how an STI/CBI approach, through different levels of material and social mediational support, influences the learners' development of metaphorical awareness/competence regarding Chinese animal metaphors, and how learners as individuals across various proficiency levels would improve through an STI/CBI approach. The main research question is: How does an STI design influence the learners' metaphorical awareness/competence regarding Chinese animal metaphors? The subquestions are as follows:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref2">1</reflink>) How would the same STI design influence the development of metaphorical awareness/competence of the intermediate and advanced learners regarding Chinese animal metaphors?</item> <p></p> <item> (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref3">2</reflink>) How would individual learners with different learning styles and histories react to the same STI design during their learning processes?</item> </ulist> <p>Adopting Boers' (2004) and Littlemore's (2001a) theories, this study refers to metaphorical awareness as learners' awareness in recognizing the commonalities and cross‐cultural/linguistic variations in (animal) metaphors and defines metaphorical competence primarily as their ability to find the meaning of animal metaphors and the speed in doing so.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-11">Participants and research settings</hd> <p>Three students from a U.S. public university, Alice, David, and Lisa (pseudonyms), gave informed consent and joined the study. They were all enrolled in the university for degree programs at the time of the study and were native speakers of American English.</p> <p>Both Alice and David were advanced learners of Chinese. Alice was an undergraduate who had studied Mandarin for six years through classroom instruction and online courses. She passed HSK 5[<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref4">2</reflink>] with a score of 61% and spent one semester studying abroad in China. David, a first‐year M.A. student in the TESL program took Chinese classes for four semesters in college and spent 1 year abroad in China teaching English and studying Chinese. He had passed multiple official HSK 4 practice tests. Finally, Lisa was a first‐year undergraduate, double‐majoring in Chinese and microbiology. Unlike the other participants, Lisa had no immersive experience in the target culture and studied Chinese by taking online courses in high school and classroom courses in college. Although she had not taken any internationally accredited standardized tests of Chinese, Lisa was described by her then Chinese teacher as an intermediate Chinese learner.</p> <p>Over 4 consecutive weeks, one of the researchers, a native speaker of Chinese, served as the instructor and met with each participant individually for 1 hr/week in a group study room at the library of the participants' university. Initially, the instructor delivered the instructional content in Mandarin to all participants. However, it turned out to be too challenging for Lisa to converse and comprehend information entirely in Chinese. Using Chinese as the main instructional language was probably beyond her Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which is, according to Vygotsky (1978), "the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers" (p. 86). Considering that mediation in the learner's ZPD plays a central role in the developmental process in educational activities (Lantolf &amp; Poehner, 2014), the main instructional language was switched to English in Lisa's sessions. Meanwhile, the teaching materials used in Alice's and David's sessions were kept the same for Lisa as the amount of the target language input was within her ZPD and she was able to comprehend and use the words, idioms, and sentences with the mediation of the instructor and learning materials.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-12">Teaching agenda</hd> <p>The lessons were partly derived from the Chinese Metaphors Lesson Unit created by the language education and research center at the participants' university. The unit on animal metaphors was taken as the teaching focus. Metaphorical concepts related to three mammals, monkeys, dogs, and tigers, in particular, were included in the lessons. The rationale for choosing these three animals was as follows: (a) it was necessary to select a small number due to the limited timeframe for the study, and (b) expressions involving these animals are highly prevalent in Chinese.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-13">Design of SCOBAs</hd> <p>Given the scarcity of studies on Chinese animal metaphors, SCOBAs in this research were designed largely based on Hsieh's (2006) and Kieltyka and Kleparski's (2007) theoretical constructs. To materialize each animal's metaphorical concepts, semantic molecules were first obtained from animal expressions to trace the derivation of figurative meanings associated with the selected animal. These molecules were composed of "primitive semantic features" (Goddard, 1998, p. 255) derived from the animal's appearance, habitat/behavior, human–animal relations, and are supported by linguistic expressions (Hsieh, 2006). Next, drawing on the network of the semantic molecules, core conceptual spheres that could be mapped to figurative meanings were, then, generated.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-14">SCOBAs of monkeys, dogs, and tigers</hd> <p>Following the procedure described above, semantic molecules of these three animals were first extracted from their animal expressions (see the Appendix for sample lists). For the expressions of <emph>hou</emph> [monkey],[<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref5">3</reflink>] the main semantic molecules generally include <emph>kid, head, brain, hand, foot, skinny, impatient, careless, restless, naughty, mischievous, shrewd, calculating, and sneaky</emph>. The semantic molecules of <emph>gou</emph> [dog] mainly include <emph>leg, walk, flunky, abettor, brown‐nose, patronized, bully, evil, defeated, fell, loser, and desperate</emph>. Finally, the semantic molecules Hsieh (2006) summarized for <emph>hu</emph> [tiger] were used for tiger metaphors, containing <emph>big, great, strong, swallowing, fierce, courageous, proud, powerful, important, energetic, robust, greedy, hungry, dangerous, violent, cruel</emph>, and so forth (p. 2212).</p> <p>Combining semantic molecules with foundational conceptual spheres of animal metaphors (such as APPEARANCE/PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS, BEHAVIOR/CHARACTER) summarized by Kieltyka and Kleparski (2007), relevant conceptual spheres were generated. Semantic molecules were not mapped word‐by‐word onto each conceptual sphere; rather, the spheres reflected the core semantics of semantic molecules. Accordingly, conceptual sphere charts were created from which the SCOBAs of the three animals were developed. Figures 2–7 below are the resulting conceptual charts and SCOBAs made for the three animals:</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/FLA/01sep20/flan12483-fig-0002.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="flan12483-fig-0002.jpg" title="2 Conceptual spheres chart of monkey" /> </p> <p></p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/FLA/01sep20/flan12483-fig-0003.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="flan12483-fig-0003.jpg" title="3 Schema for orienting basis of action of monkey [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]" /> </p> <p></p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/FLA/01sep20/flan12483-fig-0004.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="flan12483-fig-0004.jpg" title="4 Conceptual spheres chart of dog" /> </p> <p></p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/FLA/01sep20/flan12483-fig-0005.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="flan12483-fig-0005.jpg" title="5 Schema for orienting basis of action of dog [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]" /> </p> <p></p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/FLA/01sep20/flan12483-fig-0006.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="flan12483-fig-0006.jpg" title="6 Conceptual spheres chart of tiger" /> </p> <p></p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/FLA/01sep20/flan12483-fig-0007.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="flan12483-fig-0007.jpg" title="7 Schema for orienting basis of action of tiger [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]" /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0146139009-21">Pedagogical design and data collection procedure</hd> <p>For each animal, four expressions were selected as target phrases for instruction (as listed on each SCOBA in Section 3.3.1) based on the researchers' judgment of the expression's prevalence and representativeness in Chinese. An instruction session for each animal was approximately 1 hr long. Explanations of their metaphorical meanings were oriented by concept sphere charts and SCOBAs. Afterwards, the students were shown word cards with one animal expression on each and were asked to infer the metaphorical meanings of each expression oriented by the SCOBA. The instructor further explained their metaphorical meanings after the learner's inference. Following the word card activity, students were given a worksheet with fill‐in‐the‐blanks exercises asking them to match the context described in each sentence to one of the four animal expressions learned.</p> <p>The preinstructional phase and Week 4 consisted of a presurvey, a posttest, and reflective activities. The presurvey contained two parts. The first part presented questions that solicited information about the participants' demographic, educational, and linguistic backgrounds. The second part was a pretest of the participants' metaphorical awareness/competence regarding Chinese animal metaphors before the lessons. All data collection instruments used in the present study can be freely downloaded on the IRIS Database; iris-database.org. Table 2 outlines a sequence of teaching activities and the data collection procedure.</p> <p>2 TableData collection and pedagogical activities timeline</p> <p> <ephtml> &lt;table&gt;&lt;thead valign="bottom"&gt;&lt;tr valign="bottom"&gt;&lt;th&gt;Timeline&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Teaching activities&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Data set&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/thead&gt;&lt;tbody valign="top"&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Preinstructional phase&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presurvey&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Results of the presurvey&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;list list-type="Bullet"&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. Background survey&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. Pretest&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;/list&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Week 1&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Project introduction and animal metaphors of hou [Monkey]&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;list list-type="Bullet"&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. Texts of all in&amp;#8208;class work, drawings and students' notes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. Audio recordings of the instructional session&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;/list&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;list list-type="Bullet"&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. Metaphor awareness activity&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. SCOBA of hou&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;3. In&amp;#8208;class communicative activities: word cards, fill&amp;#8208;in&amp;#8208;the blanks, drawing activity&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;/list&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Week 2&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Animal metaphors of gou (Dog)&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;list list-type="Bullet"&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. Texts of all in&amp;#8208;class work, students' notes, and homework assignments&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. Audio recordings of the instructional session&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;/list&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;list list-type="Bullet"&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. SCOBA of gou&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. In&amp;#8208;class communicative activities: word cards, fill&amp;#8208;in&amp;#8208;the&amp;#8208;blanks, video watching&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;3. Take&amp;#8208;home reflective writing assignment&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;/list&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Week 3&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Animal metaphors of hu (Tiger)&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;list list-type="Bullet"&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. Texts of all in&amp;#8208;class work and students' notes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. Audio recording of the instructional session&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;/list&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;list list-type="Bullet"&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. SCOBA of hu&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. In&amp;#8208;class communicative activities: word cards, fill&amp;#8208;in&amp;#8208;the&amp;#8208;blanks, creating a narrative&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;/list&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Week 4&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;The reflective session&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;list list-type="Bullet"&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. Texts students produced during the session&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. Audio recordings of the session&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;/list&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;list list-type="Bullet"&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. Verbalizing meanings of all word cards&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. Creating participants' own SCOBAs&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;3. Posttest: metaphor transfer, cross&amp;#8208;cultural reflection&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;list-item&gt;&lt;p&gt;4. Reflecting on SCOBA's roles&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/list-item&gt;&lt;/list&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt; </ephtml> </p> <p>1 Abbreviation: SCOBA, schema for orienting basis of action.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-22">Data analysis</hd> <p>Two types of qualitative data were collected: (a) textual data including presurvey results, writing assignments, and all the in‐class work produced by the learners as well as (b) audio‐recordings documenting the instructional sessions.</p> <p>The data‐analysis procedure followed Vygotsky's genetic method. At the ontogenetic level, the histories of the individual learners' developmental processes were reconstructed via information gathered from the data sets of presurveys, the participant's written classwork, and audio‐recorded instructional sessions. In particular, it used a microgenetic approach to trace the participants' levels of appropriation and internalization of the metaphorical concepts as per Arievitch and Haenen's (2005) model of the formation of mental actions.</p> <p>The participants' presurveys were reviewed and analyzed to gain qualitative knowledge about their prior language learning histories and their prior knowledge about the target animals' metaphorical concepts before receiving the instruction (students' OBA). Each audio recording of the instructional sessions was examined and transcribed to microgenetically identify the learner's actions at the material, or verbal, or mental levels for each instructional or communicative activity. The students' written classwork was used as supplementary data to help interpret their appropriation and internalization of the metaphorical concepts at the verbal and mental levels. Lastly, the transcripts were thematically coded to highlight the participants' learning styles and their reactions to the same STI design.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-23">FINDINGS</hd> <p>A total of 9 hr 38 m 31 s of audio‐recorded data was collected from the instructional sessions. The textual data collected included 20 pages of written assignments, in‐class exercises, and survey results. The following subsections present findings that are pertinent to the developmental processes of CFL learners' metaphorical awareness/competence regarding Chinese animal metaphors through the CBI approach.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-24">Findings from the pretest</hd> <p>The pretest results suggested that all three participants possessed little knowledge about the animals' metaphorical meanings in Chinese, despite their proficiency levels. The first task of the pretest examined the participants' metaphorical competence in interpreting the metaphorical meanings associated with eight common animals in Chinese: monkeys, dogs, tigers, pigs, bulls, dragons, horses, and snakes. The participants showed little understanding of the common metaphors associated with these animals in Chinese despite their knowledge of the Chinese names of the animals. Of the eight animals, only the metaphorical meanings of the dragon were interpreted appropriately by Alice and David. These two participants appeared to derive their interpretation from a limited number of Chinese idiomatic expressions (e.g., <emph>tiger mom</emph>) and the literature they were exposed to. For example, they both interpreted the metaphorical meanings of the monkey as a derivative of the qualities from Monkey King—a protagonist in the classic Chinese novel <emph>Journey into the West</emph>. As for Lisa, she failed to fill out most parts of the table and indicated that she had no idea how these animals were interpreted metaphorically in Chinese.</p> <p>The second task asked the participants to self‐evaluate their knowledge levels (0–5) of the metaphorical meanings of 20 selected animal expressions commonly used in Chinese, from which 12 were selected to constitute the teaching items for the later instructional sessions. Expressions with ratings over 3 indicated that the participants had some knowledge of them. The participants' responses showed that they were not confident or inaccurate about their levels of knowledge for most of the animal expressions. Alice rated only one expression over three. Lisa rated two expressions at a score of 3. David rated 14 expressions over 3, among which 10 were teaching items. Later, during the instructional sessions, the instructor found that David actually had much less knowledge about those 10 items than he claimed. He misjudged his level of knowledge for at least 71.4% of the animal expressions evaluated.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-25">CFL learners' developmental process of metaphorical awareness/competence during instructional...</hd> <p>This section presents findings based on data collected from individual instructional sessions concerning the participants' conceptual developmental progress across the material, verbal, and mental levels (Arievitch &amp; Haenen, 2005) in growing their metaphorical awareness and competence. Given the qualitative differences in the interactions with each participant (Kim, 2013), in the following subsections, the findings will be presented case by case.</p> <p>In general, regardless of their language proficiency, all the participants gradually formed mental actions that facilitated their performance as they moved forward through the sequence of pedagogical activities, mediated by their gradually internalized metaphorical concepts. Nevertheless, their uptakes of the same STI design varied possibly due to their learning styles, prior knowledge, and learning histories. Table 3 summarizes and compares the participants' developmental processes.</p> <p>3 TableOverview of participants' developmental stage</p> <p> <ephtml> &lt;table&gt;&lt;thead valign="bottom"&gt;&lt;tr valign="bottom"&gt;&lt;th /&gt;&lt;th&gt;Participants&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr valign="bottom"&gt;&lt;th&gt;Levels of actions&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Alice&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;David&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Lisa&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/thead&gt;&lt;tbody valign="top"&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;At the material level&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Object (SCOBA)&amp;#8208;regulated; Confusions with similar conceptual spheres and semantic domains&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Object (SCOBA)&amp;#8208;regulated; Pursue more form&amp;#8208;based knowledge&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Object (SCOBA)&amp;#8208;regulated; Without much confusion (instructional language in English)&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;At the verbal level&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Speedily and effortlessly verbalize the majority of metaphorical concepts;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Gradually become more attentive to the conceptual meaning;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Verbally act upon the concepts to evaluate the concepts learned;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Verbally act upon the concepts to construct elaborate narrative&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Appropriately verbalize the core meanings of animal expressions&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Capable of verbalizing most of the metaphorical concepts&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;At the mental level&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Act upon mental concepts to create her own SCOBAs;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Act upon mental concepts to successfully complete the metaphor&amp;#8208;transfer task; Actively created his own SCOBAs&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Act upon mental concepts to generate reasonable hypothesis for the metaphor&amp;#8208;transfer task&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Deep reflection on cross&amp;#8208;cultural differences&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt; </ephtml> </p> <p>2 Abbreviation: SCOBA, schema for orienting basis of action.</p> <p>The purpose of categorizing their development into three stages is to capture their developmental progress, rather than to suggest that these levels are separate and linear. Instead, the participants moved spirally across different stages of development to gradually increase their internalization of the metaphorical concepts and improve the quality of the mental actions (Arievitch &amp; Haenen, 2005). Due to space limitations, this spiral process is mainly demonstrated in Alice's case. Examples of this process from David's and Lisa's sessions are briefly presented in the discussion section.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-26">Alice's case</hd> <p>At the material level, Alice was largely able to use the SCOBAs to successfully orient her thinking and performance based on the essential and distinctive concepts materialized in different conceptual spheres. For example, after the instructor explained the SCOBA of <emph>hou</emph> [monkey], she managed to infer the metaphorical meanings of the expressions <emph>shou pi hou</emph> (thin‐skin‐monkey—a very skinny person) and <emph>hou ji</emph> (monkey‐rush—very impatient/to be in the rush to do something).</p> <p>Excerpt 1:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> The researcher (R): <emph>这里有四个词, 你看它们属于哪个类别, 哪个 category, 是什么意思?</emph> [Here on these cards, we have four animal expressions. Could you figure out what (conceptual) spheres they belong to, which category, and what are their meanings?]</item> <p></p> <item> Alice (A): Umm...Uhm! <emph>猴急应该是那样的, 就是很着急, 哈哈哈哈</emph>. [Oh! <emph>Hou ji</emph> is like that, it means in a rush, hahahaha]</item> <p></p> <item> The researcher: <emph>对, 猴急是</emph>. [Right, that is the meaning of <emph>hou ji</emph> ]</item> </ulist> <p>Excerpt 2:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> A: <emph>我不记得这个字, 这个"瘦"。噢!这个就是这个, 哈哈哈哈。瘦皮猴, 就是这个样子, 很瘦</emph>. [I do not remember this character, this character, this " <emph>shou</emph> ". Oh! This one belongs to this category, hahaha. <emph>Shou pi hou;</emph> it's like this, very very skinny.]</item> <p></p> <item> R: <emph>嗯, 对对对!</emph> [Yes, right, right, right!]</item> </ulist> <p>The two excerpts above show that after determining the literal meanings of both expressions on the word cards, Alice was able to infer their metaphorical meanings using the SCOBA as an orienting tool. She specifically pointed to the conceptual categories on the SCOBA, noting "it is like that, it is like this." At this material level, she used the external object to mediate her thinking.</p> <p>At the material level, it was also evident that she was at the initial stage of appropriating the metaphorical concepts, and her thinking was still object‐regulated. There was a gap between the knowledge of metaphorical concepts she learned through the SCOBAs and her performance in the fill‐in‐the‐blanks exercise when she needed to apply the knowledge in specific contexts. For her, the knowledge was still <emph>external</emph>, rather than internalized. During the fill‐in‐the‐blanks exercise, she sometimes failed to distinguish between two similar conceptual spheres, MOOD (more transient and context‐specific) and PERSONALITY (more stable character and disposition). She also mixed up two metaphorical expressions of the same conceptual sphere yet matched to different ends on a semantic continuum—like <emph>hu jin</emph> (tiger‐strength—great physical strength) and <emph>hu jiang</emph> (tiger‐general—a person who is very capable and brave beyond the physical level). Both belong to the same conceptual sphere of POSITIVE STRENGTH for tiger metaphors. For one sentence that described people who possess great physical energy, Alice chose <emph>hu jiang</emph> to fill in the blank. For another sentence that depicts people who played an important role in a company, she selected <emph>hu jin</emph> instead. After the instructor's further explanation, Alice gradually cleared up her confusion and developed a deeper understanding of both expressions: <emph>hu jin</emph> refers to a person's strength, but <emph>hu jiang</emph> is a person; <emph>Jiang</emph> literally means a general who plays an important role but yields to the leadership of political power and, therefore, metaphorically <emph>hu jiang</emph> refers to important figures in an organization who are nevertheless not the highest‐ranking leaders. Her deepened understanding further facilitated her performance in more advanced communicative activities as shown below.</p> <p>As Alice gradually succeeded in appropriating the concepts, she was able to verbally act upon the concepts. In the later narrating activity, Alice created a narrative using <emph>hu jiang</emph> to describe some people she knew.</p> <p>Excerpt 3:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> A: Umm, <emph>我觉得一定看到了很多虎将</emph>. [Umm, I think I must have met many <emph>hu jiang</emph> ].</item> <p></p> <item> R: Um‐hum.</item> <p></p> <item> A: <emph>很多可能有点太多的意思。可是我觉得我有机会认识很多老师, 或者其他这样的</emph> organizations, <emph>或者在</emph> school, <emph>或者</emph> club, <emph>或者在教会这样的人</emph> 。 <emph>他们不是</emph> in charge, <emph>可是他们做的很多很重要的事情, 是比较...可是, 我不懂</emph> , powerful, <emph>不一定是</emph> powerful, <emph>就是</emph> like, very important.</item> <p></p> <item> [I said "many" might indicate a large size. However, I think I had met a number of people like this, such as many professors, or people in organizations, schools, or clubs, or at churches. They are not in charge, but they are doing numerous important things. They are very...but I do not understand, powerful, they are not necessarily powerful, but they are like, very important].</item> <p></p> <item> Their work is important.</item> <p></p> <item> R: <emph>对, 他们不一定有</emph> political power, <emph>但是他们非常</emph> important [Right, they may not have political power, but they are very important], their work is their power.</item> <p></p> <item> A: <emph>我觉得, 呃, 因为我学习的情况, 呃, 有一点特别。我, 好多次我要请老师帮我, 做一些事, 或者看一下, 噢, 这个可以不可以。所以这门课, 那门课, 这样的。然后我觉得有一些老师, 他们不一定是</emph> department head, in charge of something, <emph>那样的人。可是他们真的, 做的, 他们做的是很</emph></item> <p></p> <item> [I think, well because of my academic situation, um, is kind of special. I, many times, I had to ask my professors to help me, ask them to do something for me, or take a look and see if this is ok or not, like if I could choose this class, or that one. And then I feel like some professors, they may not be the department head, in charge of something, people like that. But they are really, what they did, what they did was really], to me, the work they do is very powerful and important because it changes my opportunities here. <emph>然后他们做的事, 做的很好, 做的很快, 那样。所以我不知道能不能说虎将</emph> [And they always did a great job efficiently, like that. So, I do not know if I could say they are <emph>hu jiang?</emph> ]</item> <p></p> <item> R: <emph>你可以说他们是这个</emph> department <emph>的虎将</emph> , <emph>但是你不能说他们是你的虎将</emph>. [You could say they are the <emph>hu jiang</emph> of this department, but they are not your <emph>hu jiang</emph>.]</item> </ulist> <p>Alice could use the metaphorical concepts of <emph>hu jiang</emph> properly to mediate her narrative. She highlighted the important roles played by these people in their organizations and to her. At this level, she was able to verbally act upon the concepts of <emph>hu jiang</emph>, in contrast with her previous confusions about its meanings. At this verbal level, Alice raised "problem questions" (Arievitch &amp; Haenen, 2005) that further facilitated her understanding. For instance, she inquired about the nature of the power of <emph>hu jiang</emph>. By continuously resolving confusion about the deeper aspects of <emph>hu jiang</emph>'s meanings, she gradually moved toward higher levels of internalization.</p> <p>In the fourth week, after a series of pedagogical activities, Alice was able to readily and effortlessly verbalize the metaphorical concepts of most of the 12 animal expressions. At this stage, it was evident that she did not need external objects to mediate her mental actions, and the material representations had been replaced by word concepts and speech (Arievitch &amp; Haenen, 2005).</p> <p>During the reflective session, Alice demonstrated evidence of being able to act upon the mental concepts in the internal plane to generate hypotheses to create her own SCOBAs and try to work out the metaphorical meanings of new animal expressions. In creating her own SCOBAs, she raised some possibilities to improve the conceptual explicitness of semantic subdomains within the same conceptual sphere. One possibility was to use a series of mini cartoon illustrations to visualize the action states (e.g., to visualize <emph>hou ji</emph> as being in a rush to do something <emph>but</emph> have not been able to), or to visualize the affiliated relationship inherent in some metaphorical concepts like <emph>hu jiang</emph> (affiliated with an organization). Near the end of the reflective session, Alice introspected that her conceptualization of the use of animal metaphors in Chinese culture had been substantially transformed. The prevalence of fixed animal expressions in Chinese culture revealed a distinct animal metaphor system in the Chinese language intertwined with profound cultural and historical messages, such as metaphors of <emph>gou</emph>.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-27">David's case</hd> <p>Similar to Alice, David showed evidence of gradually forming mental actions passing through three levels of abstraction as he progressed through the sequence of pedagogical activities. At the material level, when his task performance was oriented by the physical representation of concepts, like Alice, he experienced difficulties in capturing essential features that distinguished two conceptual spheres like MOOD and PERSONALITY for <emph>hou</emph> metaphors, or between two semantic subdomains within the same conceptual sphere, such as <emph>hu jin</emph> versus <emph>hu jiang</emph>.</p> <p>Apart from these similarities, David had a distinctive learning style. In contrast to Alice, who appeared to accept the meditational role of SCOBA visualization readily and wield it to her use effectively, David seemed to resist using it, especially at an early stage, partly because the presented SCOBA did not comply with his learning history and goals. This incompatibility was evident at the material level where he was oriented to the SCOBAs and was supposed to complete tasks according to their materializations.</p> <p>First, he questioned the categorization of concepts on the SCOBA because it was at odds with his prior understanding or OBA. For instance, he doubted the division between PERSONALITY and MOOD.</p> <p>Excerpt 4:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> R: <emph>那你觉得这个像什么呢?</emph> [What does it look like?]</item> <p></p> <item> David (D): Umm... <emph>猴子的</emph> [Monkey's]...mood....mood. <emph>就是情绪?</emph> [Is mood <emph>qing xu</emph> (mood)?]</item> <p></p> <item> R: <emph>对, 是情绪。就是</emph> personality <emph>是一个人的, 呃, 性格。可能他一直</emph> , always <emph>是这样子</emph> 。</item> <p></p> <item> [Yes, it is mood. Personality is one's, um, and character. A person may always be like this.]</item> <p></p> <item> <emph>然后</emph> mood <emph>是</emph> [And, mood is], just at that moment.</item> <p></p> <item> D: Temporarily.</item> <p></p> <item> R: <emph>对</emph> [Yes], temporarily.</item> <p></p> <item> D: Umm... <emph>和我刚刚说的有点一样, 就是一个人, 他现在</emph> , um... [Just like what I said, this picture shows a person. He is now, um...]</item> <p></p> <item> R: <emph>你觉得这个图画像什么样子?哈哈哈</emph> [What do you think it looks like? Hahaha.]</item> <p></p> <item> D: <emph>就是, 不能管住, 和你刚刚说的。呃, 就是, 它, 我不知道是不是正确的。但是好像它, 它疯掉了。就是它有点</emph> crazy, <emph>它, 嗯, 嗯, 对, 就是, 嗯</emph> , mood... <emph>我觉得我就是</emph> , mood <emph>和我说的</emph> personality <emph>有点一样。我不知道怎么</emph> , <emph>怎么</emph> , like, separate.</item> <p></p> <item> [It's like, you cannot control him, just like what you said. Um, it is, I do not know if I am right, but it looks like this monkey is crazy. He is kinda crazy. Um, yeah, it's like, I feel like mood is somehow similar to the personality I am talking about. I do not know how, how to, like, separate.]</item> </ulist> <p>In Excerpt 4, David revealed that he understood MOOD as somewhat similar to PERSONALITY and that separating these two did not make sense to him. This confusion continued to the word card activity when he was supposed to infer the metaphorical meanings of animal expressions based on different conceptual spheres. For example, David was very uncertain whether he should categorize the expression <emph>hou jing</emph> [monkey‐shrewd—a shrewd and calculating person] into the category of PERSONALITY or MOOD. His disagreement with the conceptual division between PERSONALITY and MOOD might have inhibited his further appropriation and internalization of <emph>hou</emph>'s metaphorical concepts in later materialization activities.</p> <p>Moreover, David's learning goal seemed to be more form‐oriented rather than concept‐based, and he turned away from using the SCOBAs for some activities despite the instructor's reminders. During the first two sessions, David insisted on treating the fill‐in‐the‐blanks exercise as a self‐test and made efforts to complete it without any mediational assistance. Fill‐in‐the‐blanks exercise is highly common in FL education, and David's form‐based approach may have reflected his past learning experience of dealing with this type of task. It was likely that he attentively picked up relevant grammatical knowledge from the instruction and used them as rules of thumb to make choices, but did not direct much attention to conceptual meanings. His explanation of his choices was mainly based on structural rules instead of conceptual cues. For example, in one sentence, he chose <emph>hou ji</emph> instead of <emph>hou jing</emph> because the sentence asked for an adjective. He made the right choice many times but could not verbalize the sentences' meanings.</p> <p>It was unclear whether David's learning style hindered him from appropriating the metaphorical concepts. However, he gradually became more attentive to the conceptual meanings as he made mistakes in the fill‐in‐the‐blanks exercise due to his lack of understanding of the concepts. David's developmental path implies that development is spiral rather than linear (Arievitch &amp; Haenen, 2005; Lantolf, Kurtz, &amp; Kisselev, 2016) as his use of past knowledge and experience may not always pave the path for immediate improvement and development. Thus, to David, more mediation was needed, and a concept‐based intervention seems particularly necessary, especially for FL metaphors. Although David's learning style diverged from the activities' objectives at the material level, he largely followed the pedagogical sequence and was constantly mediated to various types of materialization in addition to the SCOBAs. In the final session, he was able to verbalize the core meanings of all learned animal expressions appropriately, though not as speedily and effortlessly as Alice.</p> <p>During the final reflective session, David acknowledged that the SCOBAs helped mediate his memory, as he remembered the mental image in the SCOBAs and the position of each animal expression in the domains of different conceptual spheres. Moreover, the categorizations of different concepts helped him to better understand the metaphorical meanings of animal expressions. Eventually, he seemed to internalize the SCOBAs as a chain of images at his mental level to mediate his actions.</p> <p>David actively engaged in the SCOBA creating activity, trying different ways to categorize the metaphorical meanings of the animal. Instead of working on the expressions of each animal separately, he considered all the animal expressions as one group before classifying them.</p> <p>Excerpt 5:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> D: Umm, keep trying to do different ways, but...(murmuring) appearance? similarity? I don't know, I am just, I am just trying different ways. This is like, for me, um, like actions,</item> <p></p> </ulist> <p>• R: Ah</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> D: Sort of like consequences of actions, like the way you act, like <emph>zou gou</emph> , or, you, you know, <emph>sang jia gou</emph>. Because of something you did. These like something like toward personality, or maybe your mood or something, sort of like the inner things,</item> <p></p> <item> R: Um‐hmm.</item> <p></p> <item> D: And this is more like appearance or outer things.</item> <p></p> <item> R: Oh, ok!</item> <p></p> <item> D: I don't know. Basically, the way you did it is like, the most logical way. So, I just tried to do other ways. I mean there was, the most useful way for me, I guess, is a little bit along these lines. Knowing the differences between what is like describing someone based on the way they act, like their actions, or is it a personality thing, or is it an appearance thing, I think this is useful, um.</item> </ulist> <p>David finally created three conceptual groups: ACTION, INNER QUALITIES, and APPEARANCE/OUTER THINGS to classify the metaphorical concepts of the three animals. Notably, he put MOOD and PERSONALITY, with which he had confusion in Excerpt 4, in the same conceptual group of INNER QUALITIES, which made more sense to him. Moreover, for the metaphor transfer activity, he could infer almost all the metaphorical meanings of the new animal expressions based on the concepts he had learned. For these activities, his ability to act upon pure concepts demonstrated a transformation of actions from the material and the verbal forms to the mental form.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-28">Lisa's case</hd> <p>Unexpectedly, Lisa turned ill in the third week, resulting in the suspension of the third session. As a result, she had not learned metaphors of tiger and the reflective activities revolving around the metaphors of the first two animals (monkey and dog).</p> <p>Despite her health condition, Lisa also passed through three levels of abstraction and she gradually formed mental actions by appropriately using metaphorical concepts to perform mental tasks. Notably, she smoothly carried out actions at different levels, without much difficulty in capturing each concept's distinctive features.</p> <p>Excerpt 6:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> R: So why do you think it is <emph>hou</emph> [monkey‐child]?</item> <p></p> <item> Lisa (L): I thought they are just talking about a kid, and it's also the fact like, they are describing this kid in one way not like he is currently at this exact moment, which is why I don't think it would be <emph>hou ji</emph>. Um, so because they are saying like "very"' in a certain way, kind of says he is always that way. So it's like a personality. And then, the personality describes a kid, um, it says he is difficult or playful or something, so, <emph>hou er</emph>.</item> <p></p> <item> R: Yeah, yeah. And also, <emph>谁也管不住他</emph> [no one could keep him under control]. Like, no one can control him.</item> <p></p> <item> L: Yeah,</item> <p></p> <item> R: So he is very, haha,</item> <p></p> <item> L: Difficult</item> <p></p> <item> R: Naughty, yeah, hahaha.</item> </ulist> <p>As shown in Excerpt 6, Lisa clearly explained how <emph>hou er</emph> [monkey‐child—a naughty and mischievous kid] was fitting the context of the sentence. First, she pointed out that the contextual clues asked for an expression describing PERSONALITY, and she was clearly contrasting essential features that distinguished the conceptual sphere of PERSONALITY from that of MOOD. Later, she declared that the context also indicated a difficult and playful kid, pointing out the essential features that distinguished the metaphorical concepts of <emph>hou er</emph> from that of <emph>hou jing</emph>. Both examples were among many others that demonstrated her high quality of action in appropriating metaphorical concepts. Compared with Alice and David, Lisa displayed a clearer understanding of <emph>hou</emph>'s metaphorical concepts, particularly of the spheres of PERSONALITY and MOOD.</p> <p>Proceeding from the material level, Lisa could gradually perform actions at the verbal level in expressing her ideas and knowledge about the concepts learned. For example, in the final reflective session, she was able to verbalize most of the metaphorical concepts and meanings of the animals she learned. At the mental level, she also generated reasonable hypotheses on new animal expressions, mediated by metaphorical concepts she eventually internalized.</p> <p>Excerpt 7:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> Lisa (L): Monkey head and monkey...I don't know the singular meaning of...</item> <p></p> <item> The researcher (R): Brain, brain</item> <p></p> <item> L: Brain? Oh</item> <p></p> <item> R: Yeah.</item> <p></p> <item> L: Dog and...this</item> <p></p> <item> R: Officer, like working for an institution or government.</item> <p></p> <item> L: Ok. Um, so I think for <emph>hou tou hou nao</emph> [monkey‐head‐monkey‐brain], it sounds like might be describing a personality? I don't really know. Um, either like being hard to control or calculating. Um, I suppose because brain is part of the word, and head, that kind of thing. Um, I guess I would say that it is close to <emph>hou jing</emph> , something like that, maybe too smart, too clever? Not necessarily a good way, maybe?</item> <p></p> <item> R: Umm‐hmm.</item> <p></p> <item> L: And for <emph>gou guan</emph> [dog‐officer], um, I think I would say the category would be when the leader (owner) is present.</item> <p></p> <item> R: Um‐hmm, yeah.</item> <p></p> <item> L: So, that category, and the meaning, I guess, it reminds me of <emph>zou gou</emph> , where like they might be a part of something larger, like an institution, or the government or something. But those are my guesses.</item> </ulist> <p>In the above excerpt, Lisa inferred that <emph>hou tou hou nao</emph> [monkey‐head‐monkey‐brain] described a type of personality similar to the meaning of <emph>hou jing</emph>, essentially based on the meanings of <emph>tou</emph> [head] and <emph>nao</emph> [brain], which implicated a person's inherent mental qualities. Although her inference was not conventionally appropriate, she was able to hypothesize a reasonable interpretation mediated by the concepts she appropriated. For the new expression <emph>gou guan</emph> [dog‐officer], she also captured its core metaphorical meanings aligned with what had been conventionalized in Chinese culture. Generally, a gradual formation of mental actions can be seen to proceed from the material level to the mental level in her learning process. Although the selected excerpts may not substantially manifest a spiral progress, her learning trajectory of Chinese animal metaphors, especially shown in the final reflective session, also had a spiral nature as she raised questions that initiated a more advanced orientation toward the concepts' deeper features.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-29">DISCUSSION</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0146139009-30">The gradual formation of mental actions</hd> <p>The gradual formation of a mental action that moves through the three levels of abstraction contributes to the gradual internalization, enhances the quality of action supported by the parameters of generalization and abbreviation, and ultimately leads to the mastery of a mental action with speed and ease (Arievitch &amp; Haenen, 2005). Such processes correspond with the conceptual development of metaphorical awareness and the gradually increased mastery of metaphorical competence that is maintained by the increasing mastery of relevant mental actions.</p> <p>Clearly, following the STI approach, all the participants made significant progress despite the relatively short period of 4 weeks. Step by step, they formed mental actions in using the gradually internalized metaphorical concepts to find meanings in metaphorical expressions. Compared with their prior knowledge revealed in the pretest results, the participants' performance in the final reflective session evidenced the effectiveness of an STI approach in improving CFL learners' metaphorical competence. Further, mediated by the STI pedagogical design, all the participants showed an expanded metaphorical awareness in recognizing the commonalities and differences in the animal metaphorical expressions of their L1 and L2 cultures. Usually, the metaphor lessons started with warm‐up questions to engage with students' OBA, and which may have raised their cross‐cultural awareness of animal metaphors, since they sometimes generated insightful cross‐cultural reflections during the lessons as evidenced in Alice's case. However, since the development of cross‐cultural metaphorical awareness/competence was not the focus of this study, this paper only analyzes and discusses learners' development in their L2 metaphors. In addition, for various tasks, the participants alternatively acted at the material, verbal, and mental levels, and steadily made improvements that oriented them to more advanced levels of appropriating and internalizing the concepts, attesting Arievitch and Haenen's (2005) spiral model. Besides Alice, both David and Lisa's learning trajectories were also spiral, especially when they raised questions that directed back to the materializations of the concepts but initiated further internalization towards the concepts' deeper features. For example, while performing verbal communicative tasks, David asked whom <emph>hu jiang</emph>'s [tiger‐general] power serves—the organization or people affiliated with the organization. After the researcher clarified that <emph>hu jiang</emph> is more at the service of the organization's benefits rather than a particular person's, David achieved a deeper understanding of the nature of <emph>hu jiang</emph>'s power. Likewise, Lisa further understood the different possible relationships between the deplorable situation of <emph>sang jia gou</emph> [lose‐home‐dog] and the "powerful figure" behind as she raised clarification questions during the learning tasks. However, due to space limitations, this spiral process was only demonstrated in Alice's case in the findings section.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-31">Promoting L2 metaphorical competence/awareness across language levels</hd> <p>This project also indicated that the same STI design is effective for L2 learners across different language levels and various language learning experiences. Findings, especially from the pretest, weakened the assertion that higher language proficiency corresponds to greater metaphorical competence (Aleshtar &amp; Dowlatabadi, 2014). As illustrated in the findings, higher language levels did allow for more extensive interpretations of L2 metaphorical expressions, yet did not assure appropriate and complete interpretations. As revealed in the pretest results, more advanced learners could misjudge their actual knowledge of metaphorical expressions and form unreliable <emph>spontaneous concepts</emph> (Lai, 2012) from their limited exposure to particular expressions or literary works in the target language.</p> <p>Moreover, the immersive language experience both Alice and David had in China did not seem to contribute much to their metaphorical competence, at least in Chinese animal metaphors. Accordingly, explicit instruction may be highly necessary for learners to appropriate complete and proper metaphorical concepts as it helps them dispel their misunderstanding and orients them to accurate and generalizable <emph>scientific concepts</emph> of culturally specific metaphors.</p> <p>Lower language proficiency did not seem to get in the way of appropriating and internalizing L2 metaphorical concepts. In the end, all three participants showed a significant leap in their metaphorical awareness/competence. Nonetheless, inadequate language proficiency did sometimes limit the learners' access to broader linguistic and content resources without recourse to dictionaries or other assistance.</p> <p>However, lower language proficiency may require an adjustment of the main instructional language if the use of the target language is beyond the learner's ZPD. In this study, the main instructional language for Lisa was adjusted to her L1 to provide a high‐quality mediation in her ZPD. In Kim's (2013) study, she also used the participants' L1—Korean as the instructional and communicative language to mediate their internalization of the concepts of sarcasm in L2 English. However, it remains unclear whether the use of students' L1 would make a difference in their appropriating and internalizing L2 concepts by making the concepts more transparent to them. The developmental outcome may have been affected by other individual factors, as discussed below. Future studies may explore the role of different instructional and communicative languages in the process of learners' conceptual development as well as how to balance FL learners' linguistic and conceptual development in the target language.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-32">Individual differences in response to the same STI design</hd> <p>The participants' uptake of the same STI design varied throughout the learning processes. Alice readily accepted a concept‐based approach and effectively wielded the SCOBAs to her use, though she indicated that the SCOBA design could have been more explicit for certain metaphorical concepts. In contrast, David's learning style was not at first compatible with the concept‐based approach. He questioned some categorizations of the concepts since they went against his prior knowledge, such as the case of PERSONALITY and MOOD for <emph>hou</emph>'s (monkey) metaphorical concepts. He resorted to self‐summarized "rules of thumb" (Lantolf, 2011, p. 40) and form‐based features to perform the tasks, instead of using the SCOBAs as a mediational tool. In Lai's (2012) study, the participants also discussed in their postsurvey that their acceptance of the explanation of the concepts had affected the usefulness of the SCOBAs. In larger instructional sessions, such as classroom instruction, where opportunities for teacher–student interactions are not as ample, it may pose challenges to both the teaching and learning processes if the learners' learning styles, prior knowledge, and learning history are at odds with the planned goals of a concept‐based approach.</p> <p>Lisa's learning process, in contrast, revealed a slightly different type of progress from Alice and David's pattern. She showed a better general understanding at the material level than the other participants, who were more proficient in Chinese. The contributing factors were found to be opaque. Lisa received the instruction in her L1, but it is not yet clear whether adopting the learners' L1 as the instructional language would make a difference in their internalization of the concepts. Other individual differences may also affect learners' levels of conceptual understanding.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-33">Pedagogical implications</hd> <p>The findings of this study raise the FL educators' pedagogical awareness that the language learners' verbal fluency does not necessarily assure a comparable development of conceptual fluency (Danesi, 1992) in the target language. The need to receive explicit and systemic instruction of L2 metaphorical concepts equally applies to learners across different language levels and from various learning environments. Moreover, educators do not have to wait until learners are developmentally ready before they can implement a concept‐based learning approach. Learners at lower language levels are capable of internalizing L2 concepts if provided with appropriate material and social mediation according to their ZPD. Furthermore, a concept‐based approach seems effective in engaging beginner L2 learners into agentive communicative practices that simultaneously promote their conceptual and linguistic competence in the target language.</p> <p>In addition, the findings from this study are adaptable to the instruction of FL metaphors in an individual tutorial or an intact classroom setting. FL tutors and educators can design accurate, high‐quality, and systemic cultural and conceptual tools such as SCOBAs to mediate students' internalization of L2 metaphor concepts. Various communicative activities are needed to engage learners in exploring their learning environments and solving problems by acting upon the concepts, instead of adhering to right or wrong answers.</p> <p>An STI‐driven pedagogical approach can be combined with developments of new technologies in designing digital conceptual tools as high‐quality mediational means, incorporating digital learning experience into the stepwise instructional sequence. Furthermore, it orients learners to the concepts embodied in the target language, promoting their internalization of powerful psychological tools for meaningful and agentive cultural exploration, which further fosters their identity as culturally competent FL learners in the global era.</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-34">CONCLUSION</hd> <p>Despite the indispensable role of metaphor in foreign/second language communication, the comprehension difficulties FL learners have experienced, and the high need for metaphor teaching pressed by scholars (Boers &amp; Demecheleer, 1998; Henderson, 1982; as cited in Littlemore, 2001b), few studies have explored the pedagogical possibilities of teaching L2 metaphors explicitly. This project implemented a concept‐based pedagogical design that follows the stepwise STI (Gal'perin, 1989; Lantolf &amp; Poehner, 2014) to teach Chinese animal metaphors to CFL learners. Drawing on the findings regarding the individual cases of three English‐speaking participants with disparate Chinese language levels, we found that learners across different language levels are equally in need of systemic and scientific instruction in animal metaphors. Higher language levels may allow for more elaborate interpretations of L2 metaphorical expressions but do not guarantee their accuracy and appropriateness. The STI design effectively fostered CFL learners' metaphorical awareness/competence by mediating their appropriation and internationalization of the metaphorical concepts across the material, verbal, and mental levels, despite their different L2 levels.</p> <p>This study, thus, contributes to the growing literature on systemic metaphor instruction in FL education. Essentially, this project directed the learners to explore meanings, concepts, and cultural models embedded in a foreign language, enhancing their cultural understanding as well as a disposition for cultural exploration and self‐reflection, all of which are essential to the development of "global competence" (ACTFL).</p> <hd id="AN0146139009-35">ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</hd> <p>This research was partially supported by the grant program of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST 109‐2410‐H‐011‐001), Taiwan. We are thankful to our participants, who made this research possible, and to the Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research (CALPER) at the Pennsylvania State University, whose Chinese metaphor teaching materials inspired the instructional design of this project. We are sincerely grateful to James Lantolf and Celeste Kinginger for their invaluable comments on the earlier versions of this paper. We would also like to thank Mohammad Moniruzzaman Akhand for his support during the initial course of this project. Finally, we are indebted to the three anonymous reviewers and Editor of <emph>Foreign Language Annals</emph> for their insightful feedback and support. However, any errors in this article remain our own.</p> <p>APPENDIX</p> <p>(sample lists of animal expressions)</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> 1. Hou [Monkey] Expressions: <emph>hou jing</emph> 猴精 [monkey‐shrewd—a shrewd and calculating person] <emph>hou er</emph> 猴儿 [monkey‐child—a naughty and mischievous kid] <emph>hou ji</emph> 猴急 [monkey‐rush—very impatient/to be in the rush to do something] <emph>shou pi hou</emph> 瘦皮猴 [thin‐skin‐monkey—a very skinny person] <emph>hou shou</emph> 猴瘦 [monkey‐thin—being skinny] <emph>hou tou hou nao</emph> 猴头猴脑 [monkey‐head‐monkey‐brain—being restless, impatient and naughty like a monkey] <emph>hou shou hou jiao</emph> 猴手猴脚 [monkey‐hands‐monkey‐feet—being careless and reckless in handling things] <emph>tiao hou er</emph> 调猴儿 [naughty‐monkey—a naughty person]</item> <p></p> <item> 2. Gou [Dog] Expressions: <emph>zou gou</emph> 走狗 [walk‐dog—a flunky of an evil leadership] <emph>gou tui</emph> 狗腿 [dog‐leg—an abettor and/or brown‐nose of a evil person or someone in authority] <emph>sang jia gou</emph> 丧家狗 [lose‐home‐dog—a previous bad guy who became an outcast, whose backing power has been defeated, a loser] <emph>luo shui gou</emph> 落水狗 [fell‐water‐dog—a bad guy who lost power, who has been defeated] <emph>gou guan</emph> 狗官 [dog‐officer—a government officer who exploits his/her power to bully and oppress people] <emph>gou ji tiao qiang</emph> 狗急跳墙 [dog‐desperate‐leap over‐wall—a person (usually a defeated bad guy) who has been cornered to a desperate situation will risk everything to get him out of the impasse] <emph>gou zhang ren shi</emph> 狗仗人势 [dog‐lean on‐master's strength—to be a bully under the protection of a powerful person]</item> <p></p> <item> 3. Hu [Tiger] Expressions:</item> </ulist> <p> <emph>hu jin</emph> 虎劲 [tiger‐strength—great physical strength]</p> <p> <emph>hu jiang</emph> 虎将 [tiger‐general—a person who is very capable and brave]</p> <p> <emph>hu dan</emph> 虎胆 [tiger‐gut—great braveness]</p> <p> <emph>xiao mian hu</emph> 笑面虎 [smiling‐face‐tiger—a person who appears to be kind but with a cruel heart]</p> <p> <emph>mu lao hu</emph> 母老虎 [tigress—a woman who is fierce, ill‐tempered, and overbearing]</p> <p> <emph>lan lu hu</emph> 拦路虎 [block‐way‐tiger—formidable obstacle that hinders development or progress]</p> <p> <emph>zhi lao hu</emph> 纸老虎 [paper‐tiger—someone or something that appears to be daunting, but is in fact ineffectual]</p> <ref id="AN0146139009-36"> <title> Footnotes </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref1" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> In the literature of CMT, conceptual metaphors and conceptual domains are conventionally written in small capitals in order to distinguish them from specific linguistic realizations of the concepts (Lakoff &amp; Johnson, [36]). This convention is thus adopted throughout this article.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref3" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK), the Chinese Proficiency Test, is an international benchmark test which evaluates the language abilities of nonnative Chinese speakers. Six language levels are measured by the test. Learners who passed level 4 should be able to converse fluently in Chinese with native speakers. 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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: Developing Metaphorical Awareness and Competence in Chinese as a Foreign Language through Concept-Based Instruction – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Liu%2C+Shuyuan%22">Liu, Shuyuan</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9054-0702">0000-0001-9054-0702</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Hsieh%2C+Chen-Yu+C%2E%22">Hsieh, Chen-Yu C.</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4949-645X">0000-0003-4949-645X</externalLink>) – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Foreign+Language+Annals%22"><i>Foreign Language Annals</i></searchLink>. Fall 2020 53(3):478-504. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 27 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2020 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Figurative+Language%22">Figurative Language</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Mandarin+Chinese%22">Mandarin Chinese</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Second+Language+Learning%22">Second Language Learning</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Second+Language+Instruction%22">Second Language Instruction</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Instructional+Effectiveness%22">Instructional Effectiveness</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Concept+Teaching%22">Concept Teaching</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Competence%22">Competence</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1111/flan.12483 – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 0015-718X – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: Due to the importance of metaphorical capacity for L2 learners, metaphor instruction is increasingly considered a crucial part of language education. To contribute to the still growing literature, the current study reports a project of teaching Chinese animal metaphors to learners of Mandarin as a foreign language, following the framework of systemic-theoretical instruction for concept-based instruction (CBI). Given the conceptual nature of metaphors and their role in the conceptual understanding of a language, a concept-based approach is therefore hypothesized as relevant in the development of learner's metaphorical capacity. By analyzing the surveys, coursework, and assignments completed by and the audio recordings of instructional sessions conducted with three focal participants, this research shows that CBI is effective in growing the learners' metaphorical awareness and competence, despite their difference in general language proficiency and the seemingly short period of instruction. As such, this research reveals both the mechanisms of L2 metaphor learning and the effects of CBI on the practice of L2 metaphor instruction. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2020 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ1269030 |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1111/flan.12483 Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 27 StartPage: 478 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Figurative Language Type: general – SubjectFull: Mandarin Chinese Type: general – SubjectFull: Second Language Learning Type: general – SubjectFull: Second Language Instruction Type: general – SubjectFull: Instructional Effectiveness Type: general – SubjectFull: Concept Teaching Type: general – SubjectFull: Competence Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: Developing Metaphorical Awareness and Competence in Chinese as a Foreign Language through Concept-Based Instruction Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Liu, Shuyuan – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Hsieh, Chen-Yu C. IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 01 Type: published Y: 2020 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 0015-718X Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 53 – Type: issue Value: 3 Titles: – TitleFull: Foreign Language Annals Type: main |
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