College English Vocabulary Teaching And Learning Based On The Cultivation Of Metaphorical Comprehension Competence

At present, one of the most salient problems in foreign language teaching is that it is not so difficult for English learners to achieve "Verbal Fluency" of L2 but it is nearly impossible for them to acquire "Conceptual Fluency" of L2. To fully acquire a foreign language, learners also have to learn the concept system inside the target language and overcome the "nonnative-likeness". One important aspect of reaching Conceptual Fluency is to have metaphorical awareness. The researches of metaphor suggest that human beings' ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which they think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Metaphor, in essence, is a way of thinking and it is the result and tool of human knowing and conceiving the world. As language is the carrier of human thought and culture, the language is full of creative metaphorical expressions. The study of the metaphorical expressions of L2 can help learners to have a deep understanding of the language, know about the cultural phenomena and common image schema, and then construct their concept network about the language. Therefore, it must be very conducive to introduce metaphor theories into foreign language teaching and learning. Regarding the metaphorical foreign language teaching and learning, the metaphorical vocabulary learning is always the focus of metaphor study, for the vocabulary is the foundation of language and is rich in metaphorical concepts. The cultivation of students' metaphoric competence and the study of some basic metaphorical concepts will surely be of great help to EFL learners' vocabulary learning.The present research aims to explore the feasibility and effect of English metaphorical vocabulary teaching and learning based on an empirical study. The subjects of this study are 95 non-English majors of two natural classes from Wuhan University of Science and Technology City College. After one semester's experiment, the testing results of the experiment group and the control group are compared. The findings are that the conceptual metaphorical vocabulary learning is of great help to raise learners' metaphorical awareness. However, in order to fully master the metaphorical thinking and build up the concept network of the vocabulary, the related theories still need to be further studied and it also takes time for both teachers and students to accept such new approach.The present research implicates that the enhancement of L2 learners' metaphorical competence can help overcome the nonnative-likeness and facilitate the development of language proficiency, and that metaphorical vocabulary teaching can help cultivate such metaphorical competence and teachers should combine the metaphor teaching with other traditional approaches of vocabulary teaching so as to improve the effect and efficiency of L2 learners' vocabulary learning.