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Recent studies (for instance, Lawley & Tompkins, 2000) argue that students use metaphors all the time. Nevertheless, efforts on reporting students´ metaphors are scanty. This study examines metaphors college students employ in portraying their foreign language learning experiences. Interviews are conducted among 4 college students, 2 Americans and 2 Chinese, who narrate their foreign language learning experiences as hard, as lots of work, as a movie of touching stories, and as the first step. Explorations are then made to find adequacies of such student metaphors for depicting foreign language learning. Relevant studies are reviewed on how college students learn to "request" in foreign languages and a pragmatic competence development model is detected that contains five stages. The model is related to Chickering and Reisser´s (1993) psychosocial model of college student development, and evidences the latter theory´s explanatory adequacy, particularly its competence development vector.

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Shaozhong Liu is Professor of English and Linguistics at Guilin University of Electronic Technology. As Director of Guangxi´s Association of Departments of English, Dr. Liu advocates for a liberal education in/via foreign languages, and an interface study of linguistics and foreign language education.

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