Teachers should also have a sensitivity to the student's own culture in terms of how metaphors create implied meanings -- in Chinese culture, for example, arguing is considered a negative thing in contrast to the West, which made it difficult for Chinese ELL students to understand the phrase "her criticism was right on target" is meant in a good way, because of the violent nature of the metaphor (Dong 2004: 31).

One way to get a sense of the student's own referential framework of metaphors is to assign short creative writing assignments where metaphors are created by the students in English. This helps the teacher see what sort of cultural orientation and emotions the students have about certain words in English, as a point of contrast with the teacher's own native fluency. Also, it helps illustrate if the students understand the concept of metaphors, encourages metaphorical thinking in the acquired...
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