The Effect of Differences in the General Proficiency of Iranian EFL Students on their Metaphorical Competence

This study was an effort towards examining the relationship between Iranian EFLlearners’ language proficiency and their metaphorical competence. The subjectswere 120 Iranian EFL learners studying at SADR English Language TeachingCenter within the 19-25 age range. The EFL learners’ English proficiency variedfrom Elementary to Advanced which was determined by the OPT. Afterwards, thestudents were administered a researcher-made test assessing their metaphoricalcompetence. The test consisted of ten concepts with each concept containing fivemetaphors together with their Persian equivalents written in English. Having twoscores in hand, the researcher was able to see whether there were any significantrelationships between the students’ language proficiency and their metaphoricalcompetence. The researcher used the SPSS software package to calculate thedegree of correlation between participants’ language proficiency and theirmetaphorical competence. Using the Pearson Correlation Coefficient formula theresearcher used the statistical procedure of one-way ANOVA to determine therelationship between learners’ metaphorical competence and their languageproficiency. The findings revealed that the more proficient the EFL learners werein English language, the more metaphorically competent they would be.

Keywords:

Language Proficiency , Metaphor , Metaphorical Competence , EFLLearners