The Application of Conceptual Metaphors to Teaching English Idioms to English-majored Students in Viet Nam Pham Thai Bao Ngoc University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam To Minh Thanh Hoa Sen University, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam Abstract—The discovery that several figurative idioms are semantically motivated by a common conceptual metaphor (CM) has opened up a path to more systematic and insightful learning. However, it was still unclear to what extent the elaboration of conceptual metaphors (CMs) could facilitate learners’ reception and production of idioms over time. To address this issue, a quasi-experiment was conducted, with the pre-test – post-test design, on a sample of 69 Vietnamese undergraduates. Results revealed that the explanation of CM was especially beneficial for the students’ idiom reception over time, and to a lesser extent for their use of idioms. Though not outstanding in the short term compared with the traditional method, this cognitive approach showed its relatively long-lasting value in terms of both idiom reception and production. Index Terms— idioms, conceptual metaphors, CM-inspired instruction, reception, production I. INTRODUCTION An English native speaker may use approximately 20 million idioms throughout his or her lifetime of 60 years (Cooper, 1998). Due to their pervasiveness, the lack of idiomatic knowledge can be a great hindrance to EFL learners’ communication with native speakers and their progress in achieving native-like fluency. The problem is that English idioms are “notoriously difficult” to learn due to their “rather rigid structure, quite unpredictable meaning and fairly extensive use” (Liu, 2003, p. 671). Besides, idioms are not only cross-linguistic, but also cross-cultural phenomena (Kövecses, 2002). Even a learner with profound knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary still has difficulties in comprehending and using idioms if he or she is not aware of the cultural diversity underlying these expressions. Despite the importance of learning English idioms and the learners’ difficulties when facing them, this area of language is often ignored in EFL classrooms and textbooks. Many teachers in Vietnam even have a tendency to avoid using or teaching idioms in classroom since they believe that idioms are too difficult for learners, which leads to Vietnamese students’ poor idiomatic competence (Tran, 2013). Due to the alleged arbitrary nature of idioms and their fixed structures, rote memorization appeared to be the only way for learners to acquire these expressions, which were believed to be “isolated” and “independent of any conceptual system” (Kövecses, 2002, p. 200). However, since 1980, cognitive linguistics has proved that idioms are not arbitrary; it is, in fact, rooted in human thought and perception (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). According to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), idioms are not dead metaphors and the occurrence of particular words in idiomatic expressions is, to some extent, semantically motivated by conceptual metaphor (CM) – a central concept in Cognitive Linguistics, opening up a new path to more systematic and insightful learning. This finding is an inspiration for the current research, the aims of which can be addressed through the following research questions: (1) To what extent does the application of conceptual metaphors facilitate English-majored students’ reception of the target idioms over time? (2) To what extent does the application of conceptual metaphors facilitate English-majored students’ production of the target idioms over time? In this study, the application of CMs is proposed as a promising method to present idioms to EFL students, shortly referred to as the CM-inspired instruction as compared to the traditional instruction that encourages rote learning. Due to the limitation of the study, the term “reception” is used to refer to the recognition and comprehension of idiomatic expressions in reading context (rather than listening) and “production” is involved in the recall and use of idioms in writing (rather than speaking). II. LITERATURE REVIEW ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 9, No. 6, pp. 610-619, June 2019 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0906.02 © 2019 ACADEMY PUBLICATION