Developing students’ autonomy over their ability to work with figurative language

Learner autonomy involves ‘a capacity for detachment, critical reflec-tion, and independent action’ (Little, 1991: p. 2), and entails a ‘readiness to take charge of one’s own learning in the service of one’s needs and purposes’ (Dam, 1995: p. 1). In general, it has been found that language learners who are able to engage in self-directed, strategic and reflective

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learning tend to develop better communicative abilities than those who are not (e.g., Legenhausen, 1999; Dam, 2000). In other words, language learners are more likely to be successful if they know about their own thinking processes, and are able to use this awareness to regulate their learning. This is likely to be equally true of figurative language compre-hension and production. In order to develop autonomy over their ability to understand figurative language, students would need to be able to: recognise it when they see it¹; understand, at a basic level, the cogni-tive processes involved in interpreting it; and predict, to some extent, the misinterpretations that they may make as a result of gaps in their knowledge of both the source and target domains. In order to develop autonomy over their ability to produce figurative language, they would need to recognise situations in which it might be appropriate to use it, be aware of possible problems in terms of phraseology and register; and then signal their use of novel figurative expressions in an appropriate manner. Raising students’ awareness of the psychological processes of noticing, activation of source domain knowledge, associative fluency, analogical reasoning and image formation ought to go some way towards helping them develop their autonomy in these areas, although there will be limitations. Furthermore, it may encourage them to play with the language in ways that will help them to learn (Cook, 2000), and help them to continue learning beyond the classroom.

One way to raise students’ awareness of the role played by their figu-rative thinking processes in their language learning might simply be to show them concrete examples, such as those presented at the end of Chapter 3, of students making metaphoric and metonymic connections between ideas, and to use this as an opportunity to discuss the various psychological processes involved. This approach has the advantage of relying on ‘near-peer role models’, that is other students, who are of a similar level and background to them, performing the activities (Murphey, 1996). Murphey found that the ability of his language stu-dents to complete language learning activities improved significantly if they were shown videos of other students performing apparently diffi-cult tasks. He argued that this was because the approach gave them the necessary levels of confidence and self-belief to learn.

A more interventionist approach might be for the teacher to note down the various attempts made by students (e.g., during collaborative oral work) at working out the contextual meaning of figurative language, and then to draw their attention to the figurative nature of their reasoning.

As we saw in Chapter 2, preliminary findings suggest that language learners can be trained to exploit the potential of their figurative

thinking capacity in order to work out the meaning of new expressions in the target language. An important component of this training involves providing them with opportunities to develop the strategy in an individualised way (Littlemore, 2004b; 2004c). This implies that they should be encouraged to think of the networks of senses that are in their own source and target domains – which will in all probability be a mix-ture of L1, individual and partially understood L2 components – and to apply these to the contexts in which the figurative language appears.

In terms of production, learners could be encouraged to operate a quick probability check procedure. A Chinese student of English might ask herself: if I refer metaphorically to the ‘Wuzhi mountains’,² are the English likely to know what or where they are? (Personal Commu-nication with Xin Yu, MA Language Learning and Education student).

They can also be taught to be generally wary of any animal references in an L2, and to gloss with expressions, such as ‘as we say’. Alternatively, in low-consequence situations, learners can be encouraged to use higher risk strategies, such as trying out figurative extensions of word meaning potential by signalling them appropriately (or with even higher risk by not signalling them), and seeing what kinds of response they get from their interlocutors. People vary in their sensitivity to listeners’ reactions, so for the strategy to work, teachers may well need to train speakers to attend to listeners’ reactions. This training of course does double duty, given the importance of co-construction in oral discourse of metaphor (Cano Mora, 2005; Cameron and Stelma, 2005).

Even though it may be desirable for language learners to develop a degree of autonomy over their figurative thinking processes, such autonomy is unlikely to be possible for all learners, in all situations.

There are a number of factors that are likely to limit the ability of lan-guage learners to think figuratively without the help of a teacher.

Furthermore, it is important for teachers to assess what level or type of guidance or instruction their learners will need to successfully interpret and master figurative instances in the L2. To make well-informed choices, a language teacher needs to be able to estimate the degree of semantic or pragmatic transparency that particular figurative instance is likely to present to a learner. That degree of transparency is the outcome of a complex interplay between the characteristics of the type of figura-tive language at hand and the assumed characteristics of the learner, including his or her cultural background and cognitive style. In the remaining sections of this chapter, a number of factors are discussed which may limit the ability of a students to work out the meaning of fig-urative language for themselves, or to produce appropriate metaphors

and metonymies. Where relevant, possible ways of dealing with these factors are suggested.