Le metafore nell'apprendimento di una seconda lingua straniera.

This work aims to illustrate the role of metaphor in educational discourse and its mul-tiple applications in order to facilitate both teaching and learning. Part of this research will focus on the use of these powerful educational tools in foreign language acquisi-tion, but also on how students understand the metaphors they encounter, and how this latter can contribute to learning. Metaphor is considered to be an important aspect to learn and understand because it represents a key to human memory organization, which is a crucial skill for acquiring vocabulary, improving comprehension, extending thought, and increasing attention. Moreover, metaphors are pervasive in everyday lan-guage: not only linguistically but also in people’s actions and thoughts. Comprehend-ing how our mind processes and produces them is extremely important in the educa-tional field. The goal of this research is to give a clear picture of the role of metaphors in edu-cation and in our everyday lives but most importantly, to raise students’ awareness of metaphors to develop their metaphorical competence and improve their learning skills.