Metaphoric Mapping Instruction and Figurative language Ability: The Role of Brain Dominance

This study aimed to investigate the effect of metaphoric mapping instruction (MMI) on learning figurative language (FL) by left and right-brain dominant learners. Ninety female intermediate EFL learners participated in the study. Thirty served as the control group and received no MMI and followed the conventional syllabus of the language center. The other 60 learners were given the Brain Dominance Questionnaire (Davis, 1994). Based on the results, 39 learners were identified as left-brain dominant and 21 learners as right-brain dominant who served as the two experimental groups of the study. Prior to the treatment, a researcher-made test consisting of 30 figurative items was administered to the participants in all the groups as pretest. Afterwards, the treatment unfolded for the experimental groups in line with Kövecses (2001, cited in Chen, 2016) to provide learners with MMI. The treatment lasted for ten sessions and after the termination of the treatment, the participants were post-tested on FL ability. The results of the Analyses of Variance indicated that MMI was significantly effective in promoting FL ability. Moreover, there was a significant difference between the effect of MMI on left-brain and right-brain dominant learners with the right-brain dominant learners outperforming the left-brain dominant ones.