Metaphorical competence in the classroom of Spanish as a foreign language.​ : A theoretical and practical approach to the phenomenon, a didactic proposal for its inclusion in the classroom and an account of the difficulties encountered in the making of the study.

The metaphoric competence does not have the importance it deserves in the field of Spanish as a foreign language; the metaphoric language must cease to be considered as an exclusive language of the literary text. This paper addresses and discusses theories related to metaphor and particularly, the implications of metaphoric competence (MC) in the teaching and learning of languages. Furthermore, we will describe a small experiment that was conducted at the University of Stockholm in which we sought to prove that the explicit instruction of theory and practice of metaphor makes the acquisition of metaphoric competence easier for students of Spanish as a foreign language. The results of this experiment were not as expected; however, it could be concluded that much remains to be done in research on the acquisition of MC in the field of Spanish as a Foreign Language. Finally, and on the basis of the revised theories, a teaching proposal that seeks to develop the metaphoric competence in students of Spanish as a foreign language will be presented.