Focal points in the development of conceptual fluency and metaphoric competence in Hungarian as a foreign language: insights of a small-scale study

Abstract

Marco Danesi (1986) argues that in addition to high communicative and verbal competence, second language learners must also gain metaphoric competence in order to achieve native-like proficiency in the target language. Furthermore, he suggests that conceptual fluency, which he divides into three sub-competences, is just as teachable and learnable as any other linguistic competence (Danesi 1995). With these claims in mind, the present paper, based on the insights drawn from a small-scale empirical study, an error analysis, attempts to sketch out possible focal points in the teaching of conceptual fluency in Hungarian as a second language.