An Empirical Study on English Metaphorical Idioms from Cognitive Perspective

【摘要】：English metaphorical idiom expressions are usually incredibly difficult for English learners to acquire because they are stored in long-term memory and specified with regard to their semantic and syntactic structure as well as their pragmatic applicability. Although English idioms are hard to master, some English learners can acquire them as well as native speakers.There must be some efficient approaches in their process of acquiring. This paper tries to study whether the background information of English metaphorical idioms has crucial function or not in the process of language internalization through a series of empirical studies and interviews. It also tries to promote some strategies and suggestions on acquiring metaphorical idioms by contrasting test results from different target groups.