Metaphorical Perceptions of Turkish EFL Instructors in Relation to Their Students

Abstract

Problem Statement: Despite the fact that the metaphorical perceptions of university instructors about their students are important in teacher-student interactions in the classroom environment, as they pave the way to an effective teaching-learning process, in Turkey there are a limited number of studies on them. Purpose of the Study: The purpose of this study is to determine the metaphorical perceptions of Turkish EFL Instructors in relation to their students. Method: In this study both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques were used, by requesting 120 instructors to fill in forms containing prompts such as "students are like.................., because they.........." . Findings and Results: The results of the study revealed that Turkish EFL instructors created 98 valid metaphors. The most frequently repeated metaphors were baby (f=10), soil (f=8), seed (f=7), flower (f=5), child (f=5), puppet (f=4), son/daughter (f=4), white page (f=4), empty box (f=4) and slave (f=4). In accordance with the metaphorical perceptions of the subjects, five conceptual metaphorical categories were determined: 1) Student as raw material, 2) Student as significant other, 3) Student as plant, 4) Students as absolute compliant, 5) Student as animal.

A Meta-summary of the Research on Metaphors Regarding Turkish EFL Teachers’ Roles

“…Şahin, Seçer & Erişen, 2016), EFL learners (e.g. Elkılıç & Aybirdi, 2016) and learning environment (e.g. İnceçay, 2015), and ELT coursebooks (e.g.…”

“…Given all these virtues available, teachers' roles through the analysis of metaphors have been revealed in a plethora of studies with the inclusion of students, pre-service teachers and teachers themselves with regard to different subjects (Fleener, 1995;Saban et al, 2006;Seferoğlu, Korkmazgil & Ölçü, 2009;Sumsion, 2003;Hamilton, 2016). Likewise, in foreign language learning and teaching field too, metaphors have amply been used to elicit metaphors about EFL learners, learning and teaching (Şimşek, 2014;Erkmen, 2010;Fang, 2015;Coşkun, 2015;Elkılıç & Aybirdi, 2016;Özcan, Koçyiğit & Erdem, 2017), language learning process (Baş & Gezegin, 2015), foreign language classroom (İnceçay, 2015), ELT coursebooks (Kesen, 2010;ALLS 9(2):65-76 Şimşek & Dündar, 2015), speaking English (Dinçer, 2017), and most commonly about EFL teachers (Wan, Low & Li, 2011;Nikitina & Furuoka, 2008;Akbari, 2013;Oktay & Osam, 2013;Jitpranee, 2017;Tercan, 2015).…”

A mixed-methods study of tailor-made animated cartoons in teaching punctuation in EFL writing

“…L2 learners may not be aware of the fact that L2 sentences are punctuated differently than those in their first language (L1). For example, in writing samples of Turkish-L1 learners of English, the impact of mother-tongue interference was apparent as students, particularly lower-level ones, usually used the rules in their L1 to punctuate L2 writing (Elkılıç, Han & Aydın, 2009; Kırkgöz, 2010). Similarly, another corpus study of undergraduate Turkish-L1 learners’ writing concluded that the punctuation errors may be caused by L1 transfer or complexity of the connectives in English (Altunay, 2009).…”

Metaphorical Perceptions of Turkish EFL Students about Themselves The Sample of Kafkas University

“…There have been different studies in relation to metaphors about students, teachers, lessons, languages as well as school environments [6,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22].…”

“…In their study Elkılıç and Bayrakcı [21] on the metaphorical perceptions of 68 Turkish students in the Department of Translation and Interpretation, Faculty of Science and Letters at Kafkas University, Turkey in relation to their instructors and determined 60 valid metaphors for English language instructors and 58 for French language instructors, and grouped them under 7 conceptual categories .…”