Indonesian EFL learners’ development of academic literacy: a study of grammatical metaphor

This study explores the development of the academic literacy of Indonesian learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) by investigating their grammatical metaphor (GM) deployment. The participants of the study are English Department students in The State College for Islamic Studies located in Kediri, East Java, Indonesia. The EFL learners’ academic texts were collected cross-sectionally, representing two academic years of undergraduate study: the first and third year. The study uses quantitative and qualitative measurements to analyse the deployment of grammatical metaphor. First, frequency and variation analysis is conducted to reveal the prevalence and variation with which the learners deploy grammatical metaphor. Second, qualitative measures of metaphorical control are employed. Finally, this study analyses the differences in the students’ use of GM in their writing across the two years. The findings show that both groups deployed similar types of reconstruals of experiential and logical metaphors. Process to Thing transcategorisation is the largest type of experiential GM reconstrual across the two groups, while Relator to Process is the major logical GM reconstrual in both groups. Third year students surpass the first year group in the frequency and proportion of instances of experiential and logical GM deployment. In terms of metaphorical control, both groups show similar control over experiential and logical GM reconstrual. The findings suggest that a more explicit pedagogy to expose students to GM and more basic lexicogrammar teaching to enable the students to write academically valued texts are warranted.