EFL Students’ Difficulties in Metaphor Comprehension: A Case from Korean College Students

Abstract

Metaphors, usually regarded as “culturally-loaded,” are likely to cause more difficulties for readers, especially those from different cultural backgrounds, as shared knowledge is required to fully understand them (Littlemore, 2003). Based on this assumption, this study aims to examine specifically what clues readers use to interpret L2 metaphors and how Korean college students struggle with L2 reading. Through qualitative analysis, this study seeks to identify exactly what makes metaphor-reading easy or difficult for its participants. After completing a questionnaire and a reading task, participants were asked how they responded to the reading task, followed by a semi-structured interview. The findings reveal that in order to infer metaphorical meanings, Korean college students looked at syntactic structure, images of the metaphors, literal translation, and grammatical structure. In addition, culture and context appeared as factors affecting the relative ease or difficulty with which participants understood the metaphors in the reading task. Word knowledge also appeared as another important factor affecting understanding, functioning both as a cue and a hindrance as participants interpreted metaphors. In terms of the pedagogical implications, instructors’ primary focus on easily imaginable metaphors is highly recommended. Then, materials or teaching methods assisting the memorization of them can be also complementarily used.