Abstract
The present study aimed to examine the attitudes and types of metaphorical perceptions of male and female prospective English teachers (PETs) towards their English learning process. Elicitation sheet with the prompt “English learning is (like) … because …†was used to collect the data. The data were qualitatively analyzed by listing, naming, categorizing, and determining the metaphors. The results of the elicited metaphors reveal that male and female PETs’ attitudes towards English learning process include positive, negative, ambivalent, and neutral perceptions. Both male and female PETs viewed English learning in different attitudes. Male PETs generated more negative attitudes than the positive ones, while female PETs produced more positive attitudes than the negative ones. The findings also show that the metaphors were categorized into several types such as enjoyable activity, construction work, movement/journey, experience, planting/farming, exploration, and things. These types of metaphor imply the importance of the socio-cultural background of the learners. In conclusion, the metaphors help to determine appropriate strategies, methods, and materials for English teaching and learning.
Highlights
It is commonly agreed that prospective English teachers (PETs) who come to teacher education program have their own prior knowledge, experiences, concepts, attitudes and beliefs about teaching and learning process (Gutiérrez, 2015)
This section presents the results of the study in two subparts, namely attitudes towards English learning process and types of metaphors
Given the myriad of the results obtained from the questionnaire, this section is divided into male and female PETs’ metaphorical perceptions regarding English learning
Summary
It is commonly agreed that prospective English teachers (PETs) who come to teacher education program have their own prior knowledge, experiences, concepts, attitudes and beliefs about teaching and learning process (Gutiérrez, 2015). As for the importance of prior beliefs and attitudes to PETs, as stated by Richards (1998, p.71), they “serve as a lens through which they view both the content of the teacher development program and their language teacher experiences”. The basic principle of this framework is the publication “Metaphors as We Live By” by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) This theory underlies a principle which states that “the locus of metaphor is not in language at all, but in the way we conceptualize one mental domain in terms of another” A plethora of studies on metaphors has employed this method to investigate roles of English teachers (Oxford et al, 1998; Saban et al, 2006, 2007; Nikitina & Furuoka, 2008; Wan, Low, & Li, 2011; Ahkemoglu, 2011; Oktay and Vanci Osam, 2013; Akbari, 2013), English learning motivation and experiences of young learners (Mahlios & Maxson, 1998; Jin et al, 2014), pre- and in-service teachers’ perceptions towards English teachers (Seferoğlu, Korkmazgil & Ölçü, JEELS (Journal of English Education and Linguistics Studies), 7(1), 69-90
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