Abstract:

Teaching practice at the department of foreign languages of a pedagogical university shows that one of the major weaknesses of the educational process is training future linguists, translators and specialists in cross-cultural communication to recognize English metaphors, understand the basis for the hidden comparison and see how the semantic potential of a metaphor enriches written English discourse. This paper is devoted to the problem of searching for the most appropriate way to combine the results of substantial cognitive-linguistic research into conceptual metaphors with teaching methodology to enhance students’ professional competence and communicative skills. The research is based on the authors’ experience of using cognitive-linguistic method as an instrument for the analysis of conceptual metaphors in the lessons of cognitive linguistics and analytical reading, which can boost professional growth of non-native speaking undergraduate students. The better EFL learners understand and absorb typically British and American concepts, the more they integrate themselves into English linguocultural community. Therefore, such kind of analysis gives an opportunity not only to comprehend some concepts but also explain their contents. It means that conceptual analysis can be used to approach conceptual metaphors, i.e. the area that causes a lot of problems and misunderstanding for non-native speaking students. Analysis of extensive empirical material reveals that cognitive-linguistic method is a profound way of cognition and interpretation of conceptual metaphors as well as crucial for considerable improvement of the educational process in the sphere of linguistics and professional cross-cultural communication

Keywords:

Teaching methodology, metaphors, reading comprehension, EFL, discourse analysis.