The Effect of Differences in the General Proficiency of Iranian EFL Students on their Metaphorical Competence

This study was an effort towards examining the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ language proficiency and their metaphorical competence. The subjects were 120 Iranian EFL learners studying at SADR English Language Teaching Center within the 19-25 age range. The EFL learners’ English proficiency varied from Elementary to Advanced which was determined by the OPT. Afterwards, the students were administered a researcher-made test assessing their metaphorical competence. The test consisted of ten concepts with each concept containing five metaphors together with their Persian equivalents written in English. Having two scores in hand, the researcher was able to see whether there were any significant relationships between the students’ language proficiency and their metaphorical competence. The researcher used the SPSS software package to calculate the degree of correlation between participants’ language proficiency and their metaphorical competence. Using the Pearson Correlation Coefficient formula the researcher used the statistical procedure of one-way ANOVA to determine the relationship between learners’ metaphorical competence and their language proficiency. The findings revealed that the more proficient the EFL learners were in English language, the more metaphorically competent they would be.