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JohnI think that’s very good because sometimes people, sometimes peoplethink, I’ll read this and I’ll just give my opinion, but yes, I think it’s a goodidea to read as many things as possible and to try and do this.In the interaction between Debbie and Helena, the latter picks up and repeats‘express your opinion’ rather than ‘give your opinion’, possibly because this is theform Debbie uses most frequently. That is, as we saw earlier in the conversationbetween Alice and Karim, if alternative ways of expressing an idea are used by alecturer, students may pick up on one (possibly the less idiomatic one) and re-useit. So Karim paid attention to the gesture Alice used while uttering ‘outward-focus’and later produced ‘upward-focused’. In re-using their lecturers’ way of expressingsomething, both students have shown their understanding of what has been saidand that they are paying attention.In turn, this may suggest ways for lecturers to accommodate to L2 speakers’difficulties in understanding metaphorical language uses in ways that do notinvolve complete avoidance of metaphor or result in impoverishment of theinteraction. For example, if John had used ‘think about’ or ‘consider’ alongside‘look at’ when talking to Lola, this could have alerted her to the fact that he wastalking about mental processes rather than visual perception. At the same time,Debbie might have used a wider range of expressions alongside ‘study’ in orderto develop the topic while at the same time making it clear that the possiblyunfamiliar expressions (‘go over your notes’, for example) are related to those thestudent already knows. Avoidance of metaphor in response to a real or imagineddifficulty in understanding is not the answer.RecommendationsKey points to bear in mind for lecturers working at British universitiesIn this paper we have seen a range of metaphors being used successfully andless successfully by lecturers working at a British university when talking tointernational students. We have seen that the use of metaphor has a great deal tooffer in terms of its ability to develop shared understanding of difficult conceptsbut that it can present problems leading at times to misunderstandings anda tendency in students to stray from the topic. In order to avoid the pitfalls ofmetaphor use, we would like to conclude with a number of tips for making themost of the potential that metaphor has to offer in academic tutorials:■■■■■■Try to use metaphors carefully and employ linguistic signaling devices, such as‘sort of’ and ‘kind of’ as well as explicit similes to support your use of metaphor.Emphasise metaphoric meanings through the use of gesture whereappropriate.Check for signs that the students may have misunderstood everydaymetaphors and ‘small words’ such as prepositions.■■ Look out for strange topic changes on the part of the student as these mayindicate that he/she has interpreted your metaphor literally or in the wrong way.International Students | 383