Analysis of pre-school children's metaphorical perceptions towards foreign language

The main purpose of the research is to examine the metaphorical perceptions of preschool children towards foreign language. The phenomenology design was preferred in the research. The study group of the research consist of 195 preschool children receive foreign language education in preschool education institutions affiliated to Ankara Provincial Directorate of Family and Social Services in the 2022-2023 academic year. The research data collected by applying the "Foreign language is like …, because …" metaphor questionnaire to preschool children receiving foreign language education. 32 of the metaphors produced by preschool children were found to be invalid, 163 valid metaphors were included in the research data. Of the valid metaphors produced, 64 belong to the age group of 4 and 99 of them belong to the age group of 5. Of these metaphors, 83 were developed by boys and 80 by girls. It was determined that a total of 101 different metaphors were produced in the study. The metaphors produced by the participants were first examined under 2 main categories as positive and negative, and then under 11 conceptual subcategories. These conceptual subcategories in order of being most preferred; "Language", "People and Characters", "Actions", "Country", "Plant and Animal", "Object", "Foreigner", "Activity", "Numbers", "Teacher" and "City" determined. It was determined that the conceptual category with the highest number of metaphors was the "Language" concept category. It has been determined that the concept of "English" (f:21) is the most preferred among all metaphors. When the category preferences by gender are examined, it was found that girls produced more metaphors than boys in the categories of "language", "foreigner", "object", "numbers" and "plant and animal" and "teacher"; It was seen the boys produced more metaphors than girls in the categories of "people and characters", "country", "actions","object" and "activity". It was determined that girls and boys produced the same number of metaphors in the and "city" subcategory. A total of 16 metaphors were explained with negative reasons. Of these, 8 were produced by boys and 8 by girls. When the results of the research were evaluated, the 5 year old group was found to be more succesful in developing metaphors and explaining its reasons compared to other age groups. In general terms, it was determined that preschool children produced 147 positive and 16 negative metaphors for foreign languages. This situation reveals that the majority of preschool children have positive perceptions of "foreign languge".