An Application Of Image Schema Theory To English Preposition Teaching In Junior High School

Vocabulary learning is always a difficult problem for foreign language learners,since a word can have different meanings in different contexts. So are the Englishprepositions. Though prepositions are simple in form, limited in quantity, it canproduce many different meanings which are hard to understand when they arecollocated with different words. The collocation of prepositions is thought to be fixedand conventional which should be remembered rigidly according to the traditionalteaching notion, so that the internal connection among their semantic items anddifferent prepositions are neglected. Both students and teachers are tired of the oldacquisition method.According to cognitive linguistic scholars, an image schema is recurring, dynamicpattern of our perceptual interactions that give coherence and structure to ourexperience. Image schema is a concept which is widely used in cognitive linguistic. Itplays an important role in construing polyseme, especially prepositions. Thus, itarouses the author’s interests in the following two questions:(1)Can students learnprepositions effectively by the teaching based on the image schema theory?(2)Canthe image-schematic teaching method help the students learn the metaphoricalextension meaning of prepositions effectively? In this thesis, the author firstintroduces how to specify prepositions’ spatial meanings with image schema, with IN,ON, OUT as a case study. Then a teaching experiment is carried out and it aims atdiscussing how to improve prepositions teaching by using image schema theory, withthe expectation of promoting English vocabulary acquisition of Chinese Junior HighSchool students. Accordance with the teaching schedule, the author teachespreposition IN, ON, OUT in different periods. The experimental class students aretaught by the image-schematic method. In the teaching, the author first introduces the basic meaning and the central image schema of the preposition, and then explains it indetails with examples; last some exercise is done to consolidate.The author conducted a6-week experiment with two second-year classes fromCong Hua Hedong Middle School. The treatment was a case study of IN, ON andOUT in which the experimental class followed the alternative method, while thecontrol class followed a conventional one. In the beginning, a pretest wasadministered to guarantee a close language competences on prepositions between thetwo classes. After the experiment, a posttest was conducted and a questionnaire wasdelivered to experimental class students.The test results suggest that, students in both control class and experimental classmade prominent progresses; however, the grade of the experimental class is higherthan the control class, and there is a significant difference between them in theposttest. The result of questionnaire shows that most of the students are of positiveattitude towards the image-schematic teaching method. Therefore, it is concluded that,compared with the conventional one, the new method can arouse students’ learninginterests and help students understand and memorized the metaphorical extensionmeanings, also help them learn preposition effectively.