Metaphorical Competence in ESL Student Writing

In language teaching, emphasis is usually placed on grammatical competence rather than metaphorical competence to improve a learner’s proficiency in the target language. Research has shown that figurative language poses a problem for second language learners whether it is in their ability to interpret, process, or produce metaphors. This affects communication as metaphors are not only restricted to formal texts but are a common feature of everyday language through which individual’s conceptualize and describe the world. To gauge students’ metaphorical competence, this paper aims to analyze student writing to identify the type of problems second language writers have with collocations and to convince teachers of the importance of promoting the development of metaphoric language among language learners. The findings revealed that although students attempt to use a range of metaphors such as grammatical, textual, illocutionary, and sociolinguistic in their writing, these tend to be unidiomatic and need to be developed further for fluency in the target language.