Abstract：Abstract: mobile assisted language learning (MALL) has dramatically changed the foreign language learning practice. How individual students perceive and adopt MALL matters to them and educators. One of the most important frameworks for human perception is through metaphors. Thus, analyzing metaphors serves to facilitate the understanding of one’s conceptual domain and the underlying reasons for their behavior. This study aims to find college students’ perceptive features of MALL based on analysis of 3090 elicited metaphors from 6 universities. The results reveal that their metaphors fall into 4 categories, which are, from positive to negative, “experiencing something really nice”, “using empowering tools”, “using a double-edged sword” and “doing inappropriate or wrong things”，which, to a significant degree, coincide with individual student’s actual learning behaviors including invested time, specific learning activities, learning autonomy and self-regulation as well. The findings inform language teachers, policy makers and other stakeholder’s decision making in their teaching resources and syllabus designs. Key words: mobile assisted language learning (MALL); perceptive features; metaphor analysis; learning behavior
