The Application Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory In English Vocabulary Teaching Of Senior High Schools

This thesis is the empirical research of the application of conceptual metaphor theoryto English vocabulary teaching in senior high school.The metaphor is considered as figure of speech, and it is related to poetry and rhetoricbased on traditional views. In1980, the publication of Lakoff and Job Jason’s famous bookMetaphors We Live By witnessed the establishment of the cognitive approach to metaphorand that is viewed as a milestone in the area of the metaphor study.The metaphor is not only a rhetorical device but also a way of thinking and cognitionand it plays an important part in molding human conceptual system in the modern view.Lakoff and Johnson put forward that the conceptual metaphor is a pervasive phenomenonin human language and it employs experiences of one conceptual domain to expressexperiences of another domain based on what people think and act. Usually, through theconceptual metaphor people communicate with each other and experience the world.Based on the conceptual theory, the metaphor is a prevalent language phenomenonand an indispensable cognition tool and it has close relationship with language learning,especially vocabulary learning.Vocabulary has been considered as one of the important parts of foreign languageteaching and learning. Now a lot of students in senior high school complain that they havespent much time on English vocabulary, but little achievement has been made. Somescholars and researchers both at home and abroad state that the metaphor is an importantmeans by which word meaning changes, at the same time it is an important basis on whichword meaning evolves. Therefore, in the thesis a hypothesis is proposed that ConceptualMetaphor Theory can be applied to English vocabulary teaching in senior high school toimprove the students’ metaphor competence and vocabulary level.Vocabulary has been an important point for many EFL learners in China, and the aimof this thesis is providing English vocabulary learning and teaching with some implications of the conceptual metaphor theory. In the thesis, at first the definition, the features, theclassification and the working mechanism of conceptual metaphor are discussed. And then,it is the application of conceptual metaphor theory to vocabulary teaching. The resultdemonstrates that students show better competence in comprehending and memorizingwords after being instructed by applying the conceptual metaphor theory into Englishvocabulary teaching. Finally, a few implications for EFL learning and teaching are putforward.