The Acquisition and Development of the Concepts of English Modality Through Metaphors

The current study attempted to investigate the effect of Systemic-Theoretical Instruction (STI) on English-language learners’ acquisition of the concepts of modal verbs through exploiting metaphors. To this end, the effect of the main treatment of the study, i.e. Concept-Based Instruction (CBI) was investigated through conceptual metaphors, in two gender (male vs. female) and language proficiency (Elementary vs. Intermediate) groups. To inspect the acquisition of modality concepts, the participants were given a pretest and a posttest. The results were statistically analyzed through independent sample t-test and Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The results of the inspection in learning modality revealed that participants in the Experimental, Intermediate and Female groups outperformed their counterparts in the Control group in the modal test. Further, the investigation of cognitive awareness on the concepts of modality and its development revealed that the learners’ definitions on the concepts of English modal verbs were theoretically functional before STI, while they were semantically based after STI.