Examining English Language Teachers through Metaphorical Analysis

This paper investigated students’ conceptualizations of English language teacher. Metaphors play an essential part in understanding of a variety of disciplines and educational issues. It is regarded as a powerful means to examine students’ conceptualizations. This study elicited an exploratory angle, describing student participants’ conceptualizations of English language teacher through an analysis of metaphors they created in the ‘X is Y’ format (e.g., “EFL teacher is … because…”). The elicited metaphors were collected, categorized and analyzed. Through the understanding of students’ beliefs of English language teacher, it provided insightful suggestions for EFL teaching