DECLARACIÓN CONJUNTA:

For their writing task, the EFL students could choose to either write a story about a time they learned a lesson or an anecdote explaining a scientific principle. As mentioned in the previous section, since the EFL students came from two different program levels, the narrative topics were chosen to avoid giving an advantage to one class over another, as well as to provide a creative topic that might inspire metaphorical language use. Since the EFL students were attending a science university, the second topic of explaining a scientific principle through an anecdote seemed appropriate and applicable for all students, regardless of program level.

Overall, as shown in Table 24 above, the EFL experimental group increased in metaphor and metonymy use while the EFL control group’s metaphor and metonymy frequency decreased from the pre-test to the post-test. Furthermore, the EFL control group’s decrease in other

metaphor related words, total, and total without language error were found to be statistically significant at p<.05. In addition to overall metaphor frequency, students in both groups used metaphor creatively on the pre-test and post-test, as the examples in Table 25 below show. Creative and effective use of metaphor often utilized conventional metaphorical expressions and English conceptual metaphors, as in the example “history took a different way,” which expresses the conceptual metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY (Kövecses, 2010; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) or the example “we were fighting for a place in a team,” which expresses the conceptual metaphor SPORT IS WAR (Kövecses, 2010, p. 85). The examples also show commonly used linguistic metaphors and phrases, such as a “relationship with Nature,” and “eliminate the walls between professionals.” Less conventional uses tended to be less effective, as in the example “discontinue

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mind or limited mind,” which shows that the writer does not know the common phrase “narrow- minded” or “small-minded.” A more effective example is “It’s better a donkey wake up than a genius sleep.” The student uses this metaphor when she explains how she would do her

homework and study at night, but then be too tired to wake up on time and attend English class in the morning, which caused her to fail the class. As donkeys represent stupidity in both Spanish and English, this particular creative metaphor translates well in English.

Table 25: Examples of Creative Metaphor in EFL Writing Samples

EFL Control Group EFL Experimental Group Pre-Test - In the life the happiness feed the spirit of

people

- It’s import to eliminate the walls between professionals

- The history took a different way when I decided coming to study in IKIAM

- I believed that I was super good but when I trained I was a nature disaster

- I ate, slept, breath volleyball

- we have the obligation of live in harmony with the environment

Post-Test - relationship with Nature

- the director of the conference destroy all my expectations

- people have discontinue mind or limited mind

- It’s better a donkey wake up than a genious sleep

- we were fighting for a place in a team and this made a conflict

Despite these examples, most of the metaphorical language appeared in the form of common phrasal verbs, prepositions, and other collocations. This is in line with Nacey’s (2013) research, which showed that novel metaphor represented only 3-5% of total metaphors in both native and non-native writers’ texts (p. 242). In other words, Nacey (2013) found that writers are more likely to uphold English norms than either transfer figurative expressions from their L1 or deliberately create novel metaphors. As the EFL students’ metaphor frequency ranged from just 5.9% to 10.5% with few similes or examples of personification, very little of the metaphor used on the narrative task could be considered truly novel or creative.

Only one student from the experimental group used an extended metaphor in his

narrative, as shown in the example below. The student writes about each person being a unique “piece” of a group that is difficult to “join” together and compares this to the parts of the human

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body. Although this example may not be a particularly refined use of extended metaphor, it is possible that the metaphor classes encouraged him to attempt to write more extensive metaphors in English. Indeed, as Kathpalia and Carmel (2011) found that around 23% of the L2 students’ texts they examined contained absolutely no metaphors for textual coherence at all, they

conclude that students who attempt to use metaphor for textual coherence but fail are showing an interim period of language proficiency (p. 284). In other words, by attempting to add extended metaphor to his narrative, this student is showing that he is making progress in his metaphoric competence and should perhaps be encouraged to further develop these skills.

Table 26: EFL Post-Test Student Example: Extended Metaphor

This last months I learned that being with people that accept you with all your problems, are the most valuable thing that someone could have. In my point of view there is some kinds of people, and each one can be a central piece of a group. It is like the body, It has different organs with different functions, when you join all of them you create a human.

This days is difficult join the pieces for a group because there are a lot of religions or ways of think that could broke a relationship, but it’s really stupid because it damages us.

While the examples above demonstrate appropriate use of metaphorical expressions, the participants did not always use metaphor well, even on the post-test. This was especially true for idiomatic expressions. For example, the control groups’ post-test narratives included the

expression “kick on their face,” instead of “kick in the face” while the experimental groups’ narratives included the expressions “walk for their way” instead of “go their separate ways,” “have a big smile from earn to earn” instead of “have a big smile from ear to ear,” and “raining dogs and cats” instead of “raining cats and dogs.” Kathpalia and Carmel (2011) note how the fixedness of idiomatic expressions poses additional challenges for learners since even a small change to the original phrasing results in miscollocations. Indeed, they found that 22% of miscollocations in the L2 student writing they examined could be attributed to mistakes with

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idiomatic phrases (p. 281). Similarly, this study also showed that students struggle to use

idiomatic expressions correctly in their L2. Indeed, words coded as “language error in metaphor” made up to 15% of the total metaphor in student writing. These were mostly miscollocations, especially in terms of misused prepositions and verbs, but there were also instances of L1 transfer. For example, one student wrote, “when you have any age,” instead of “when you are at a certain age,” while several students used the word “form” instead of “way” when talking about

how to do something. Taken together, these results suggest that students may need more guidance with both metaphor in general and idioms and collocations in particular to improve their metaphoric competence.

Overall, the results of the study suggest that the metaphor classes may help EFL students incorporate appropriate metaphorical expressions into their writing; however, the results also indicate that teachers should not expect dramatic results from a few writing classes. Despite direct instruction of creative metaphors and similes, most students did not add many novel metaphors to their writing on the post-test. Moreover, the students’ writing showed a number of language mistakes in metaphorical expressions, particularly with conventional idioms and metaphors as well as miscollocations. As it takes time to develop writing skills, the results of the study suggest students may need more class instruction to develop their metaphoric competence in writing.