An ideal book for readers interested in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) from a new perspective of language teaching. Informative, challenging and full of insights, the book examines all the key issues of metaphor study in language teaching. The author blends innovative research into metaphorical competence in language education, with special focus on learners' mental lexicon and metaphorical competence. Readers will find the book not only interesting with regard to its account of theoretical issues and the research methods of metaphor and metaphorical competence, but also for what it can offer from a more practical and psychological point of view; concerned as it is with the fascinating subject of how human cognition operates in the brain processing metaphorical language. Thus, the book connects applied linguistics with its related fields theoretically and practically, so as to significantly broaden the research perspective for TEFL. (Publisher Book Description)