Over the last decades, the Cognitive paradigm has been contributing to the development of the communicative competence of the foreign language learners. On the one hand, it has offered theoretical data concerning the students´ learning styles and the language learning strategies to obtain, store, retrieve and use information (Chamot, 1990; O´Malley, 1987; O´Malley and Chamot, 1990). On the other, it has provided empirical evidence that metaphor awareness in ESP could have a positive effect on second language acquisition and encourage the use of metaphoric extension strategies (Low, 2008; Littlemore, 2004). This study proposes a theoretical framework for improving the learning process of English in the Scientific and Technical discourse that combines both aproaches. Data concerning metaphor comes from the terminological database METACITEC. The information concerning the internal mappings underlying the discourse of science and technology and the classification of image metaphors provides an important source for designing teaching material in this field. This metodological proposal has been validated by questionnaires and classroom observation.