JoLIE 10:2/2017
TEACHING BUSINESS ENGLISH THROUGH METAPHORS[1]
Maria-Crina Herțeg
1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia, Romania
Abstract
This article relies on an experiment conducted at 1 Decembrie 1918 University in Alba Iulia with students enrolled in Accountancy and Finances and Banking programmes. The experiment is part of a research project funded by the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation and coordinated by Teodora Popescu. It aims to measure students` awareness of conceptual metaphors in business English contexts. To this end, students were assigned with the task of identifying and explaining business metaphors from business texts retrieved from the English corpus incorporated as part of the project deliverable. The experiment consisted of two stages: pre-experimental stage which mainly consisted in giving students input on conceptual metaphors and their role in business genre. The second stage consisted in identification and explanation of conceptual metaphors. The follow-up of these stages was the interpretation of students` results. In order to measure students’ results in the experiment the teacher processed their findings and designed two scoring procedures. After processing students` findings possible solutions and explanations are provided. The experiment relies on previous work in the field, mainly on the experiments conducted by Jeannette Littlemore (2000, 2001, 2003, 2008, 2011).
Keywords: Conceptual metaphors; Business English; Business discourse; Teaching process.
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How to cite this article: Herțeg, M.-C. (2017). Teaching business English through metaphors. Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education – JoLIE, 10(2), 47-60. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29302/jolie.2017.10.2.4
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[1]This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-2785.