An Empirical Study Of Idiom Teaching From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor

As an important component of vocabulary, idioms do not only carry rich languageinformation and cultural connotation, but also is a key to idiomatic expression. Thus,idioms are one of the essential parts of language competence. On the basis ofRequirements of Practical English Test for Colleges B, vocational college students arerequired to master600idioms and phrases. What's more, the achievement of the ultimategoal of English teaching at vocational college depends in part on whether idiomsinstruction is carried out efficiently. However, idiom learning is still considered to be adifficult area of language learning.This thesis lays great emphasis on the idiom learning and attempts to apply theconceptual metaphor to idiom instruction with the intention of probing into a new way ofinstructing idioms at vocational college. Thus, based on the theory of conceptual metaphor,the author proposes the multi-modal metaphorical approach and the teaching model ofpresentation, instruction, expanding, sharing.This research is a quasi-experimental research, adopting a combination ofquantitative and qualitative analyses. Based on studies of Gibbs (1990) and Boers (2000),an empirical project is carried out in Mathematics and Computer Science, lasting18weeks. Two classes are selected as experimental class (EC) and control class (CC). EC isinstructed with the guidance of the multi-modal metaphorical approach, while thetraditional approach is still carried out for students in CC. The experiment is composed ofa questionnaire, a pre-test, a classroom test, an extended test, a post-test and a series ofteaching activities. After all the raw data are collected, the results are calculated by SPSS16.0, which manifests that conceptual metaphor can facilitate idiom learning andmulti-modal metaphorical approach can cause positive impacts on idiom instruction.The present research has provided evidence for the feasibility of applying conceptualmetaphor in idiom instruction at vocational college. Some implications concerning idiomteaching are offered for future teaching activities. However, on account of the limitations of present study, further exploration is also necessary.