In this paper, I will argue that awareness of images and metaphors held by foreign language learners about the nature of the target language and its learning can be of substantial value and provide teaching practitioners with useful insights about how to deal with various language learning problems. To elicit images which learners hold about foreign language learning, a questionnaire was given to 350 learners of English in different places in Iran. The questionnaire asked the respondents to provide images about learning a foreign language by using a sentence completion task: "Learning a foreign language is like . . ." The responses gained in 200 questionnaires were content-analyzed and the identified images and metaphors were summarized under more broad-ranging categories. The information that the metaphors and the resulting metaphorical categories provide and the theoretical interpretations which can plausibly be made are discussed in some detail and put in a cognitive-psychological perspective.Keywords: conceptual metaphor, foreign language learning, language learners' images, language learners' metaphors, learners' beliefs, metaphor analysisThe study of language learners' beliefs and thought processes has been of interest to researchers for several decades and has recently gathered increased momentum (e.g., Berry, 2004;Cotterall, 1999;Finkbeiner, 2003;Fortune, 2005;Hawkins, 1999;Liao, 2006; Svalberg, 2005). Direct questionnaires tapping into learners' beliefs about different dimensions of language learning (e.g., Horwitz,

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This study aimed at investigating learners' and teachers' perception of language learning demotivation and their suggested strategies for preventing it. Participants of the study included 36 female and 24 male EFL learners in the 15-18 age range and 19 female and 11 male EFL teachers in the 25-50 age range. Their anti-demotivation strategies were sought by using a 40-item Likert type questionnaire in learners' and teacher' versions, with Cronbach's alphas of .949 and .913, respectively. The results were analyzed and inferences were made. They indicated that both teachers and learners believed that "creating relaxing and stress free environment" and "setting goals" are the most effective ways to prevent demotivation. "Showing enthusiasm for teaching" was also regarded as effective as the above mentioned strategies. Although teachers and students had similar suggestions regarding the most effective strategies to fight demotivation, statistical analysis indicated that they were significantly different from each other when all their preferred strategies were juxtaposed and compared in one bulk. Taking the results of this study into account can help teachers be as closely aligned with learners as their practical wisdom guides them or favor their own preferences as their discretion and tact allow.