Enhancing EFL Learners Communicative Competence and Cultural Background through Modes of Rendering Metaphorical Expressions

Abstract

This study is set out to explore figurative language in English as compared toArabic, namely metaphor and idiomatic expressions to enhance EFL learners’ communicative competence and cultural background. Some of the themes which have been dealt with in this study are those related to the different types of metaphor, syntactic structure and behavior of the metaphor, and identifying some semantic peculiarities of metaphor as well as idiomatic expressions. Recognition, comprehending and using English metaphor are some of the main difficulties that face undergraduates. Hence the study summarizes the problem into two dimensions: educational and experiential, both the lecturer and the student are involved. Metaphor or figurative language in this study is generally viewed as an exaggeration in speech to achieve the speaker's intention. A number of examples have been selected and tabulated to account for the different types of metaphor and idiomatic expressions. Translation of these in Arabic has been provided too. The researcher used a descriptive analytic approach to analyze the collected data. The tools employed here to collect data have been a questionnaire for the tutors mainly concentrating on the difficulty of handling figurative language. A pre-test and post-test were also used.The study raised three pivotal questions to determine the outcomes of the study as well as three hypothetical statements which were confirmed towards the findings and conclusion of the study in chapter four and five.