A comparative study of animation versus static effects in the spatial concept-based metaphor awareness-raising approach on EFL learners’ cognitive processing of request strategies

Abstract

This study evaluates the relative effects of two cognitive linguistic approaches – using animated versus static scenes in an illustration based on the spatial concept-oriented metaphor – and a non-cognitive linguistic approach on the Japanese EFL learners’ processing of request strategies with degrees of politeness. The cognitive linguistic approach consisted of applying the metaphor politeness is distance in the teaching of different degrees of politeness. It involved a spatial concept projection through which participants could understand degrees of politeness in terms of the spatially visualized concepts of near–far and high–low relationships associated with three social variables – closeness, power, and speaker difficulty – in either animated or static illustration. In contrast, the non-cognitive linguistic approach involved rote learning of target English polite requests in a list. The results demonstrated that the static version of the cognitive linguistic approach enabled participants to process degrees of politeness and perform as well as those who underwent the animated version. Moreover, the animation effects did not appear to have had a major impact on the overall performance of groups subjected to both cognitive language approaches. The results also showed that the cognitive linguistic approach groups outperformed the non-cognitive linguistic approach and control groups.

The effects of animated versus static metaphor with 3D images on EFL learners' acquisition of degrees of certainty

“…The results of the acceptability judgement tests indicated that the static version enabled participants to perform as well as those who used the animated version, and both groups performed significantly better than the non‐metaphor awareness‐raising group, which was instructed to recollect a list of different target expressions. The metaphor awareness‐raising approaches with 2D images—animated or static—had a strong impact on the overall performance of both groups in Takimoto (2021) study. However, 2D images consist of only height and width, which might have caused the animation to play no role in making the spatial relationships of near–far and high–low more realistic in the metaphor awareness‐raising approach.…”

“…Recent metaphor awareness-raising approach studies have evaluated the efficacy of animated visualisation in teaching German grammar, such as motion verbs (Roche & Scheller, 2008), passive voice (Arnett et al, 2019), case systems (Gradel, 2016), modal verbs (Kanaplianik, 2016), and light verbs (Suñer & Roche, 2019); and in teaching English, such as vocabulary (Sato et al, 2021) and degrees of politeness (Takimoto, 2021). All studies compared the metaphor awareness-raising and non-metaphorical instructional approaches without a control group (Arnett et al, 2019;Gradel, 2016;Kanaplianik, 2016;Roche & Scheller, 2008;Sato et al, 2021;Suñer & Roche, 2019) The studies by Gradel (2016) and Suñer and Roche (2019) compared the animated metaphor awareness-raising approach and teacher-directed traditional teaching approach.…”

“…Roche and Scheller (2008) and Kanaplianik (2016) found that the animated version benefitted the learners in grammar learning, according to the results of the cloze tests. Meanwhile, Sato et al (2021) and Takimoto (2021) discovered that the animated and static versions helped learners in studying vocabulary, as indicated by the results of the cloze tests (Sato et al, 2021); and degrees of politeness, as indicated by the results of acceptability judgement tests (Takimoto, 2021).…”

“…As a follow‐up to the findings of his 2020b study, Takimoto (2021) assessed the relative effects of animated versus static versions of metaphor awareness‐raising approaches with 2D images on Japanese EFL learners of the degrees of politeness through either animated or static illustrations, followed by problem‐solving activities. The results of the acceptability judgement tests indicated that the static version enabled participants to perform as well as those who used the animated version, and both groups performed significantly better than the non‐metaphor awareness‐raising group, which was instructed to recollect a list of different target expressions.…”

Research on the Teaching Model of Animation Professional Class Based on AR/VR Technology and 5G Network

“…5G technology can effectively improve the spectral efficiency and link reliability of the system by employing multiple antenna arrays at the transceiver end and using the variability of channel fading at different antenna array locations to obtain spatial diversity or multiplexing gain, which has been widely used in communication systems in recent years [18]. The key technology in 5G and B5G systems, compared to the traditional 2D5G technology, extends the arrangement of antenna arrays to 3D space and flexibly controls the weights of each array element in 3D space to achieve 3D beam assignment, thus further enhancing the spectral efficiency of the system.…”