Exploring the Change of Chinese EFL Teacher Beliefs in Listening Teaching: A Metaphor Analysis

Metaphor offers a lens through which language teachers present their thinking about teaching and learning English as a second/foreign language. This study examined the changes of 25 middle school Chinese EFL teachers' belief in listening teaching through the use of metaphor analysis. Multiple sources of data were collected, including elicited metaphors, questionnaires, reflection journals and workshop observations. Fifteen metaphors before and 21 after the workshop were identified. By comparing these conceptual metaphors before and after the workshop, this study found that the teachers' negative attitude toward listening teaching was vanished and their view of listening teaching was broadened in terms of enhancing teacher-students ties and raising awareness of teaching design with holistic-multi-dimension understanding.