Explicit 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. The other 60 learners were given the Brain Dominance Questionnaire (Davis, 1994). Based on the results, they were divided into left-brain dominant and right-brain dominant groups who. After administering a pre-test to the participants, 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.