Publications
Publication details [#6425]
Juchem-Grundmann, Constanze and Tina Krennmayr. 2010. From MIPping to mapping: Corpus-informed integration of metaphor in materials for the business English classroom In Boers, Frank, Antoon De Rycker and Sabine De Knop. Fostering language teaching efficiency through cognitive linguistics: Introduction In : 1–26. : 317–335. 19 pp. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
Abstract
In the course of the past decade, several small-scale controlled experiments have shown that raising students' awareness of metaphor can be beneficial for vocabulary learning. The time has now come for the development of instructional materials that incorporate metaphor for the general language classroom as well as the teaching of language for specific purposes, such as business English - the field we focus on in this chapter. However, how can course designers and material writers decide (a) what figuratively used words and phrases invite prioritized targeting and (b) what metaphor themes (or conceptual metaphors) best serve the purpose of grouping and elucidating these words and phrases? If such decisions are made in an off-hand way, students may become skeptical of both the relevance and the validity of metaphor instruction as part of their proficiency training. In this chapter, we argue that instructional materials that incorporate metaphor could usefully be informed by corpus-based research into the presence and distribution of metaphors in the type of discourse the students are aiming to master. We then describe a classroom experiment in which students of business English responded very positively to vocabulary teaching that was aided by their appreciation of metaphor themes attested in such corpus-based research.
(Constanze Juchem-Grundmann and Tina Krennmayr)