Metaphorical perceptions of science high school students in Turkey about the concept of “English”

The study aimed to determine the metaphorical perceptions of Science High School students about the concept of “English”, and to scrutinize the influence of their class level on the metaphors they produce. The participants of the study comprised 211 students at a Science High School in a district of Burdur province in Turkey. In the selection of the participants convenience sampling model was adopted on the volunteering basis. In the study, the phenomenology research model was utilized. To collect the data, students were invited to complete a form with the sentence structure; “English is like .... because ....” in written. A total number of 211 forms were collected, and 195 of these forms were included in the study, 16 irrelevant forms were kept out. In the analysis of the data the Content Analysis technique was used. The obtained metaphors were divided into 12 categories in terms of their similarities and the common features. These categories were also sub-categorized in 3 different groups as “positive, negative and neutral perceptions”. The result of the study revealed that the majority of the participants had positive perceptions about the concept of “English”. © Keywords: English, metaphor, perception, high schoo