The Application Of Metaphor On Vocabulary Teaching In Junior High School

The purpose of this paper is to testify that using metaphors as an approach to teaching vocabulary can facilitate our students' vocabulary acquisition.By means of the conclusions or theories of teaching approaches and learning strategies, based on my experience, the question on vocabulary teaching in junior high school are raised in my study. Our students' most-useful and helpful strategies are not consistent with our teaching approaches, and they can not benefit effectively from the methods we use in vocabulary teaching. This thesis is to prove that using metaphors can integrate the advantage of the different methods and motivate our students to learn vocabulary.First, by means of the theories of vocabulary teaching and metaphor (how it works) which were discovered by the experts, analysing the connection between the two. These theories and connections were applied to classroom vocabulary teaching and learning. The experiments were carried out with 64 students in junior high school (the average age 15) as subjects, three parts compose the experiments: first a survey was carried out to know if the subjects had metaphor awareness. It is the precondition for the following experiments. After proving their metaphor competence, vocabulary was taught using metaphors as an approach in the class. The apparent support was got from it. To get the accurate data, an example of the application was carried out in which two words up and down as objects. The 64 students were separated into the control group and the experimental group. To get objective and accurate data, the other survey had been carried out to find out the most-helpful and useful vocabulary learning strategies, which were used in the control group to understand and consolidate the two words. While for the experimental group, the intention is to show metaphors concerning two words and attempt to raise their metaphorical awareness. Two weeks later, the two groups' performances were contrasted using the same test with the words up and down. The results show that it is statistically significant to direct L2 learners' attention to the literal sense of metaphoric expression.