“ENGLISH LEARNING IS LIKE...”: METAPHORICAL PERCEPTIONS OF PROSPECTIVE ENGLISH TEACHERS ABOUT LANGUAGE LEARNING PROCESS

The present study aimed to examine the attitudes and types of metaphorical perceptions of male and female prospective English teachers (PETs) towards their English learning process. Elicitation sheet with the prompt “English learning is (like) ... because ...” was used to collect the data. The data were qualitatively analyzed by listing, naming, categorizing, and determining the metaphors. The results of the elicited metaphors reveal that male and female PETs’ attitudes towards English learning process include positive, negative, ambivalent, and neutral perceptions. Both male and female PETs viewed English learning in different attitudes. Male PETs generated more negative attitudes than the positive ones, while female PETs produced more positive attitudes than the negative ones. The findings also show that the metaphors were categorized into several types such as enjoyable activity, construction work, movement/journey, experience, planting/farming, exploration, and things. These types of metaphor imply the importance of the socio-cultural background of the learners. In conclusion, the metaphors help to determine appropriate strategies, methods, and materials for English teaching and learning.


INTRODUCTION
It is commonly agreed that prospective English teachers (PETs) who come to teacher education program have their own prior knowledge, experiences, concepts, attitudes and beliefs about teaching and learning process (Gutiérrez, 2015). These prior beliefs and attitudes are derived from PETs' "self-instruction, which is accumulated from social history and culture, personal experience and education" (Xu, 2012(Xu, , p. 1398. As for the importance of prior beliefs and attitudes to PETs, as stated by Richards (1998, p.71), they "serve as a lens through which they view both the content of the teacher development program and their language teacher experiences". It reveals that PETs not only have to be engaged in their beliefs and attitudes but also have to promote such beliefs and attitudes by determining their importance in order to determine success in their language classroom practice (Breen, 2001;Sexton, 2004;Bernat & Gvozdenko, 2005). PETs' beliefs and attitudes towards the learning process have to be interpreted as a way to disseminate its positive effect on learning (Aragao, 2011).
One way to attain this goal is through metaphorical perceptions about English language learning process. The basic principle of this framework is the publication "Metaphors as We Live By" by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). This theory underlies a principle which states that "the locus of metaphor is not in language at all, but in the way we conceptualize one mental domain in terms of another" (Lakoff, 1994, p. 185). In other words, this theory enables PETs to develop their awareness in English learning by transforming what they have in mind to real conceptualization in metaphorical perceptions. A plethora of studies on metaphors has employed this method to investigate roles of English teachers (Oxford et al., 1998;Saban et al., 2006Saban et al., , 2007Nikitina & Furuoka, 2008;Wan, Low, & Li, 2011;Ahkemoglu, 2011;Oktay and Vanci Osam, 2013;Akbari, 2013), English learning motivation and experiences of young learners (Mahlios & Maxson, 1998;Jin et al., 2014), pre-and in-service teachers' perceptions towards English teachers (Seferoğlu, Korkmazgil & Ölçü, 2009), secondary learners' views about the learning process (Swales, 1994;Martinez, Sauleda, & Huber, 2001;Alger, 2009: Çap & Acat, 2012Fang, 2015), attributes about language learning (Ellis, 2002), and university teachers' views towards research assistant (Yalcin et al., 2016). However, the majority of these studies focused on metaphorical perceptions produced by learners towards teacher roles, secondary learners' views towards learning and teachers towards teachers and learners. Little study has been done in terms of metaphorical perceptions produced by male and female PETs as university students in terms of their attitudes towards English learning process. Moreover, none of these previous studies was conducted in the Indonesian context. Seemingly, researchers have not given much attention to PETs' beliefs and attitudes towards their language learning process (Nikitina & Furuoka, 2011;Ishiki, 2011).
Different from the previous studies, this present study conducts metaphorical perceptions on English language learning process generated by male and female PETs who are also Indonesian university students. This study has several differences compared with the previous studies. Firstly, it is conducted in Indonesia, one of the countries in Asia, which is known for its various cultures, customs, and languages or dialects. English in Indonesian academic institutions is a foreign language, and it is mainly used for educational contexts, but not for daily routines. However, the majority of previous studies was done in western countries and those that use English as a second or first language. This difference yields some important findings of metaphorical perceptions in terms of various cultures and languages of the PETs. Secondly, the main focus of this study is to investigate PETs' metaphorical perceptions in terms of their attitudes towards English learning process in the Indonesian context, while the previous studies mostly focused on metaphorical perceptions towards language teachers and learners, learning motivation, and attributes of language learning. It is important for PETs to relate their attitudes and make assumptions about language learning process through metaphorical perceptions to leads them to "perspective transformation" (Johnson & Nelson, 2010) in learning English as a foreign language.
To limit the focus of this current study, the following questions were then addressed: 1) What metaphors do Indonesian male and female PETs generate to examine their attitudes towards English learning process; and, 2) What are the types of metaphorical perceptions produced by male and female PETs?

LITERATURE REVIEW The Nature of Metaphor
The word metaphor is defined as "a word or phrase used to describe somebody/ something else, in a way that is different from its normal use, in order to show that the two things have the same qualities and to make the description more powerful" (Oxford Learners' Dictionary, online). Metaphor is also defined "as a novel or poetic linguistic expression where one or more words for a concept are used outside of its normal conventional meaning to express a similar concept" (Lakoff, 1993, p. 202). The use of metaphor is meant to indicate something indirectly by using an object which can be referred to the subject being indicated and it includes "any comparison that cannot be taken literally" (Bartel, 1983, p. 3). It is no more related to the poetic matter, but it comes up with ideas from the thought that reflects real mind and behaviour (Mey, 2006;Gibbs & Matlock, 2008;Bergen & Feldman, 2008;Zhang & Hu, 2009). Reflection is the exact word to be correlated to metaphor.
Metaphor reflects people's mind and understanding towards their experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge towards something. In this case, "[t]he essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another" (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 5). Another essence of metaphor is that ''by investigating people's use of metaphors, we can better understand their emotions, attitudes, and conceptualizations, as individuals and as participants in social life" (Cameron & Maslen, 2010, p. 7). People's thought is full of ideas which consist of prior beliefs, knowledge, experience, and future concept of something they believe. Metaphor is one of the most appropriate methods to examine people's likeness toward an issue or an object such as English language learning process as generated by a number of Indonesian PETs.

Metaphor in English Language Teaching and Learning
Metaphor is not only a tool of describing language in literary level but also a tool of communication and information in language teaching and learning (Cameron & Low, 1999;Goldstein, 2005;Steen, 2011) which conceptualizes beliefs in English language learning into practical knowledge for learners (Cameron & Low, 2004). Utilizing metaphor as a method for examining beliefs and experiences in English learning process is much useful for PETs as English learners because metaphor puts "living, thinking, experiencing and feeling person at the centre of the language learning process" (Hanauer, 2012, p. 108). This can improve the quality of learning process and strategies of teaching simultaneously. The underlying reason is that the beliefs in learning process yield perceptions towards such process which has a positive influence on how language learning is undertaken by both teachers and learners (Gardner, 1985;Cornelissen, Oswick, Christensen & Phillips, 2008). This implies that metaphor has a positive effect on determining successful language learning when it is conceptualized appropriately.
There has been a myriad of studies that gives much attention to language teaching and learning. For example, Ellis (2002) conducted a study on metaphorical perceptions among a group of foreign language learners. The study depicted that the learners used several kinds of themes as they viewed their foreign language, which includes journey, work, puzzle, struggle, and suffering. Among all themes, the use of "learning as a journey" through metaphor proved that the learners were able to indicate that their foreign language was challenging and needed more time to be acknowledged.
In another study, Nikitina and Furouka (2008) focus on the metaphors generated by university learners in Malaysian context towards the roles of teachers in their classroom. In this study, they found that the learners' perceptions towards language teachers were positive, and no significant difference was found between male and female adult learners who viewed their language teachers by using metaphor.
Aktekin (2013) studied learners' views about their language learning process through metaphorical perceptions. She found that the learners tended to view English as an "Activity that needs practice and/or patience." The use of metaphor by the learners as a method resulted in positive thinking which is helpful for them to create a better English learning process. In the same vein, Jin et al. (2014) conducted a study on the use of metaphors to find out motivation in learning English among primary school learners in the Chinese context. Their study revealed that the learners have high motivation to learn English. Several other learners were worried about learning English but were enthusiastic about improving their abilities through the application of various strategies.
The study by Şimşek (2014) was focused on the application of metaphorical perceptions among prospective English teachers at teacher education in a Turkish university. The study revealed that the prospective English teachers viewed English as a language which consists of various functions and can be used for interaction.

METHOD
To carry out the study on investigating metaphors in language learning process, a group 75 senior English learners, who were also prospective teachers in English education at a public institute in Indonesia, were selected to participate in this current study. Of the 75 participants who participated in this study, 58.6% (n=44) were female and 41.3% (n=31) were male. The average age of the participants was 20 with several year experiences in learning English at the English department of the public institute.
The participants have already attended a teaching practice program in some selected schools. They participated not only as learners but also as teachers whose task was to implement the learning process. In this study, they were considered to have been acknowledgeable with both English teaching and learning process. Their experiences, knowledge, and beliefs on the English learning process were expected to help them produce deep and comprehensive metaphors.
The data were collected in two forms. The first form consisted of demographic data such as name, age, gender, and major. The second form was metaphor elicitation sheet as utilized by the researchers in previous studies (Oxford et al., 1998;Saban et al., 2006) with the prompt "English learning is (like) ... because…".
Before filling in the forms, there were several data collection steps to be followed. The first step was that brief instruction and explanation about the concept of metaphorical perceptions were given to the participants. This is to enhance their understanding and comprehension of the use of metaphors in investigating their beliefs, knowledge, and experiences in learning English. To do this, some examples which enabled them to think of their comprehension towards the metaphors were presented. The second step was that the metaphor elicitation sheets were distributed to be filled in by the participants. The allocated time was 60 minutes which include 5 minutes to complete the demographic data and 50 minutes to complete the blank sheet with their metaphors. The third step was that the participants were given 5 minutes to check their sheet before they were collected.
This present study applied qualitative analysis. To analyze the qualitative data, the framework of metaphorical perceptions analysis by Cameron and Low (1999) was adopted. There were several steps to be completed namely, a) the metaphors generated by PETs as the participants were listed; b) the attitudes of each metaphor was determined and the underlying reason for producing such metaphorical perception was identified. In this case, determining the attitudes and entailment of each metaphor was important to figure out every possible factor for choosing such metaphors (Guerrero & Villamil, 2002). The attitudes included positive, negative, ambivalent or neutral; c) the identified attitudes and entailment were assigned in order to determine appropriate types of the metaphors; d) the identified metaphorical perceptions were group based on the appropriate types.

FINDINGS
This section presents the results of the study in two subparts, namely attitudes towards English learning process and types of metaphors. Given the myriad of the results obtained from the questionnaire, this section is also divided into male and female PETs' metaphorical perceptions regarding English learning. The comparison between both metaphorical perceptions was aimed to describe the differences in terms of what both male and female PETs think about their English learning. As for the metaphors generated by both PETs, there were attitudes of entailment of the metaphors, which include positive, negative, ambivalent, and neutral. Each metaphor was also grouped into main types. Several examples were given to each attitude and type of metaphors.

PETs' Attitudes towards English Learning Process
The results of the study can be seen from the following tables. Each table represents the use of specific attitudes towards English learning process. It also contains metaphor which is considered as learner metacognitive thought on their learning.
The following tables present the attitudes of metaphors (i.e. positive, negative, ambivalent, and neutral) and entailments as generated by both male and female PETs. Each attitude is provided with some examples of the metaphors. In this case, not all elicited metaphors were presented. The selected examples were considered to represent all metaphors generated from the participants.
As for the positive metaphors generated by male PETs, Table 1 below depicted that male PETs (29%, n=9) viewed their beliefs towards English learning in different metaphors such as online chat, fishing, house building, drinking salty water, and going around a tourist destination. The entailment of males PETs' metaphors that follow indicates English learning as a joyful activity, laborious effort, procedural and unlimited knowledge. Unlike male PETs' positive metaphors, Table 2 below revealed that female PETs (43.2%, n=19) generated their highly positive beliefs towards their English learning. The females' metaphors were watering flower, first-time experience in cooking, washing, planting in the garden, diary writing, and dancing. Seemingly, the beliefs were closely related to females' daily routines. The entailments indicate English learning as a practical but enjoyable activity, long-lasting knowledge, and careful learning. Male PETs' beliefs are also categorized into negative metaphors. As can be seen in Table 3, the majority of male PETs (51.6%, n=16) viewed the English learning process through negative perceptions. It is difficult to claim the negativeness based on the metaphors (e.g. mountain climbing, medical check-up, eating rice) that seem to be positive. Most entailments (e.g. painful end, tiredness, complexity, and frightening) of the metaphors indicate that the perceptions are negative. Female PETs' negative metaphors are lower than the females' metaphors. Only 29.5% (n=13) of the metaphors consist of negative perceptions. These include waiting, eating wind, reaching the sun, playing games, and browsing the internet. As for the entailments, English learning was considered to be bored, unclear, impossible, and difficult to learn. As identified in Table 5, the smallest number of male PETs (6.4%, n=2) viewed English learning as ambivalent beliefs. They include ricefields cultivation and boating in the river. The entailment is a bit complicated that English learning is considered to be laborious, but satisfying and engage much effort.

Metaphor Entailment
Cultivating ricefields It is true if we are tired to learn, but we can get satisfying results then.
Boating in the river We have to struggle a lot before we end up at the end of advanced level.
Unlike male PETs' ambivalent metaphors, ambivalent metaphors generated by female PETs is higher (20.5%, n=9) than those of the males' metaphors. These metaphors are learning to cook, helping mother, shopping, watching a drama, and using a computer. The reasons for such metaphorical perceptions are entailed based on the metaphors.

Metaphor Entailment
Learning to cook It is difficult to cook any food for the first time, but when we try again and again, we can be a chef.
Helping mother You must feel bored to help a lot, but your housekeeping experiences are improving.

Shopping
It needs much money to buy stuff, but when we are done, we can be so happy.
Watching a drama First, we feel bored with a longer introduction; then we can enjoy the story until the end.

Using a computer
It is not an easy task to learn how to operate a computer, and when we finish learning, we won't forget it for an unlimited time.
Neutral metaphors, as can be seen in Table 7, is also generated by male PETs (13%, n=4). Two examples are given, such as preparation for an exam and experience to fly for the first time.

Preparing an exam
If we don't prepare for an exam a long time before it begins, we can fail. In English learning context, we can't master English if we don't begin learning from now on.

First-time flight experience
To avoid any worry in further flights, you should take your first flight safely. To avoid any anxiety in learning English, you should learn basic English. Table 8 shows that female PETs (6.8%, n=3) generate two metaphors, including frozen ice and moving to the city. The entailments suggest that English learning needs to be equipped with appropriate methods or strategies of learning.

Metaphor Entailment
Frozen ice The ice is melted by heating it up. Difficulties in English learning are solved by highly enthusiastic strategies.

Moving to the city
We can be successful if we leave our village and move to the city. We can also be the best in English if we learn it with modern methods.

Types of Metaphorical Perceptions
Based on the attitudes of metaphors as described earlier, it is noted that each example in each attitude can be divided into main types. It is aimed to figure out both male and female PETs' cultural, rational, typical, cognitive, affective, psychological, and developmental orientation towards their metaphorical selection. As seen in Table 9, there are several types of metaphors generated by male PETs such as enjoyable activity (e.g. chatting online), construction work (e,g building a house), movement/journey (e.g. fishing, climbing a mountain, boating in the river), planting/farming (e.g. cultivating ricefields), food/drinking (e.g. drinking salty water), experience (e.g. having medical check-up), and exploration (e.g. controlling the world). These types reflect male PETs' beliefs and attitudes towards their English learning process. Moreover, the males' metaphors are slightly different from those generated by the female (see Table 10).  Table 10 revealed that female PETs' metaphorical perceptions vary in terms of types. The types include enjoyable activity (e.g. writing a diary, shopping, watching a drama), movement/journey (e.g. washing, dancing, helping mother), planting/farming (e.g. watering flower, gardening), experience (e.g. cooking first food, learning to cook), exploration (e.g. reaching the sun), and things (e.g. frozen ice).
The females' metaphors are different from those produced by the males' metaphors in terms of construction work and things. Such differences depicted that both male and female PETs viewed English learning based on their gender beliefs and attitudes. The males' metaphors consist of activities that are usually done by male PETs such as climbing a mountain, visiting a tourism place, and boating in the river. On the contrary, the females' metaphors reflect activities that are more feminist such as writing a diary, watering a flower, and learning to cook.

DISCUSSION
The present study reveals that male and female PETs viewed English learning in different attitudes. It can be seen from the metaphors generated by both PETs. This study shows various findings. The first finding is that the metaphors about the English learning process included positive, negative, ambivalent, and neutral. This is supported by several studies (Jin et al., 2014;Coşkun, 2015) who found similar findings. In both studies, they found that learners' attitudes towards English learning included positive, negative, neutral, and ambivalent. However, other studies (Fang, 2015;Şener, Bulut, & Ünal, 2017) which investigated the learning process, only found positive and negative attitudes towards the learning process. In line with the attitudes, the current result also found that both groups had a different level of attitudes towards English learning. Male PETs' metaphors consisted of positive (29%), negative (52%), ambivalent (6%), and neutral (13%) attitudes. On the contrary, the females' metaphors consisted of positive (43%), negative (30%), ambivalent (20%), and neutral (7%) attitudes. The differences in attitude towards the learning process are determined by learners' beliefs or perceptions towards English learning. To support this finding, a study proved that the higher number of positive attitude means that the female PETs are able to develop their English learning process and employ various strategies in order to meet the objectives of their learning (Elyıldırım & Ashton, 2006). In the same vein, Gardner (1985) and Mirici (2010) agree that positive attitudes towards English learning owned by learners enable them to learn English more intensively and finally become acknowledgeable with English.
Another important result of this present study is that various types of metaphors were identified. However, male PETs generated slightly different types of metaphors if compared with those of female PETs. Both PETs' types of metaphors are enjoyable activity, movement/journey, planting/farming, experience, and exploration. The males added construction work, while the females added things. These various types of metaphors have a particular implication on PETs beliefs and attitudes towards English learning process. This finding is in line with several studies by Caballero (2006) who found English as a "journey", Ellis (2002) who believes English as "struggle" and Cortazzi and Jin (1996) who found English as "cultivation". They believed that the generated metaphors reflected positive target in learning English.
The metaphorical perceptions generated by the learners are of high interest in many results of studies. The metaphors might be produced subconsciously, but "the more a metaphor is creative and unique, the more it reflects the active thought processes of the person who produced it, including thoughts that the speaker may not have been able to express explicitly" (Littlewood, 2012, p. 33). In this study, the use of metaphors such as "building a house" which entails "you need to start from the basic level" allows both PETs and English teachers to learn and teach English from the beginning level of knowledge. Another example is "cooking first food" which entails "it needs prior knowledge to make it better". This perception is understandable that to learn English a learner needs some knowledge which is related to English. Such implicit attitudes are not only creative but also properly prepared to request information about the learning process (Oxford et al., 1998).
Regarding the last problem of this study, the types of both male and female PETs' metaphors yield cultural uniqueness. Such cultural uniqueness is derived from PETs' environment and cultural background in the Indonesian context. Several types which reflect such cultural uniqueness are fishing, visiting a tourism place, climbing a mountain, boating in the river, cultivating rice fields, and gardening. This implies that the agricultural environment as socio-cultural factor influenced the PETs to generate particular beliefs and attitudes. This is in line with the finding of Gabillon (2005), who argued that beliefs and attitudes produced by learners represent their socio-cultural contexts in which they live and work. In the same vein, Fenwick (2000) stated that selected metaphors generated by learners are influenced by their cultural background, which reflects their basic attitudes and beliefs. Moreover, metaphors produced by learners are the integration between their cognitive and socio-cultural factors (Cameron, 1999).
Qualitatively, the results of the study unleash a greater contribution to how the English learning process is undertaken in the EFL classroom. Each learner shows their different metacognitive thought towards what they have been experiencing in their classroom. Their metaphors have contributive supports for their own learning in the future. To show their own thoughts, the learners have been indulged in giving their metacognitive views which highlight their specific and inner attitudes towards their learning. Mudra (2018) believes that metacognitive thought towards learning is advantageous for EFL learners' future learning. Moreover, metaphors towards English learning process indicate that the learning process in the classroom is under the attention of each learner. The learner has their own views on their previous, present, or future contribution towards learning (Su, 2015). Metaphors indicate that learners have their own learning styles and strategies. Each learner is supposed to be a different learner. It implies that they show their learning styles or strategies through given metaphors.

CONCLUSION
In this present study, it is clearly acknowledged that male PETs' attitudes towards English learning are different from those of female PETs' attitudes. Higher positive attitudes generated by the female PETs allow the learners to improve their English learning more comprehensively. They keep practising new knowledge and trying various learning strategies. On the other hand, higher negative attitudes of the male PETs imply that the learners face some problems and difficulties in learning English. Fortunately, not all female PETs viewed English learning positively, while not all male PETs perceived their English learning negatively. It reveals that the learners' perceptions were affected by their beliefs, experiences, knowledge, and attitude towards English learning.
The attitudes of both male and female PETs not only consist of positive and negative, but also ambivalent and neutral. Ambivalent attitude can be dealt with the complexity of learners' metaphorical perceptions. Some learners perceive their English learning positively or negatively through direct expressions. Complexity triggers up the learners to describe their English learning indirectly through complicated perceptions. Similarly, neutral attitude allows PETs to describe their perceptions without directly addressing to either positive or negative beliefs about English learning. The variety of attitudes help to determine real circumstances of PETs' English learning. This can be important references for improving or keeping strategies, methods, materials, and techniques of English teaching and learning.
It is pointed out that the metaphors generated by male and female PETs indicate socio-cultural knowledge and experiences. Each metaphor teaches both teachers and stakeholders to figure out how their learners think about their English learning. It implies that English teaching and learning strategies and materials are adapted based on the learners' socio-cultural background. More importantly, this study presents metaphorical perceptions of the learners who