The Application Of Conceptual Metaphor To Junior High School English Prepositions Teaching

This paper focuses on the application of the conceptual metaphor to junior high school English prepositions teaching. As we know, prepositions play an important part in English teaching and students spent lots of time to deal with them. However, the outcome of the preposition learning is far from satisfying. The first impression that preposition leaves to learners is that the quantity of it is countable; however, their senses are unpredictable. The learning methods they receive from their teachers are basically the same, which are to repeat the important meanings or collocations until they can recite. As a result, students’ passion of preposition learning decreased especially when they are confronted with a wide range of meanings and functions. The study of preposition turns to an awkward condition, only less than 10% senior EFL learners can correctly comprehend and use it. This phenomenon is greatly affected by traditional semantics which assumes that the meanings of prepositions are arbitrary and elusive. They don’t have internal relationship nor correlated. Consequently, the strategy we have to adopt is rote memorization. Supported by this theory, most of the teachers usually explain every senses of each preposition, and then force their students to recite them. The outcomes are barely desirable. In summary, traditional preposition teaching fails to meet the demands of the development of modern English teaching.The dilemma that traditional semantics meets doesn’t mean there is no other way. Cognitive metaphor cast a light on English preposition learning. Metaphor theory was widely applied to the analysis and comprehension of idioms and metaphorical language at the very beginning. As time goes by, scholars find out that metaphor theory can provide an alternative viewpoint to preposition learning, that is many distinct meanings surrounded a particular preposition are correlated in a systematic way. Some linguists have made efforts to apply it to English vocabulary learning and acquired quite a few delightful achievements. However, most of these papers focused on college and senior high school level, but rarely set foot on junior high school field. As we all know, most of the prepositions are learned in junior high school and English capacity of the students nowadays have obviously improved compared with students’ decades ago. So it is necessary and urgent for us to explore whether the application of conceptual metaphor in junior high school can improve students’ acquisition and effectiveness of preposition learning.Although English teachers and students in junior high school paid much time and energy to cope with prepositions, even a few of them are satisfying with study of them. The reality is learners fail to notice the various meaning of metaphorical motivation of metaphor, analogy and ontology mapping rules. So they cannot figure out abundant meanings of prepositions. However, metaphor has a positive effect on preposition teaching; teachers can explain the interrelation and system between various different senses by using conceptual metaphor. In the process of teaching, it can help teachers make clear some abstract and obscure meanings as well as make active some sterile knowledge, which can promote students’ learning. As for the study of English preposition caused junior high school students difficulty, the author prefer to investigate the related problems: can the preposition teaching based on conceptual metaphor effectively facilitate junior high school students’ preposition learning; whether the students in junior high school can understand and accept preposition teaching based on conceptual metaphor.In order to clarify the questions above, the author will construct the paper from the following chapters: Chapter One gives a brief introduction to the study, including the background, objectives methodology and layout. Chapter Two reviews previous studies of English preposition based on conceptual metaphor and researches on English preposition teaching. In the next chapter, the author demonstrates the major theoretical system of the paper, such as the definition, types as well as the working mechanism of conceptual metaphor. The metaphorical extension of frequently mentioned preposition is included. Chapter Four describes the methodology of the study, which plays an important part in the whole thesis. According to the theories, the author makes a teaching design in details. In the test, two classes of the similar level are selected to take the preposition test. The purpose of the test aims to test the comprehension of these prepositions. The two classes will take a test before and after the instruction respectively. Meanwhile, a questionnaire will be asked to fill in after the test. The outcomes will be seriously analyzed in chapter Five. The conclusion is drawn in the last chapter, besides; limitations and some suggestions for further research are also in this chapter.The major findings of the thesis include the following aspects: Firstly, English preposition based on conceptual metaphor can improve students’ preposition learning effectively. From the analysis of the data, we can find out that traditional preposition instruction did not help students improve their preposition learning, while the new method did let students make an observable progress. At the same time, students and their preposition learning benefit a lot from the conceptual metaphor. Secondly, most of the students in EC maintain an active attitude to the preposition based on conceptual metaphor compared with that in CC. After the instruction, students in CC are quite unsatisfied with the results of the treatment. They don’t find any pleasure or useful method in the learning preposition. While the situation in EC is not the same, they are pleased to accept the new preposition teaching and it is not difficult for them to classify the multiple senses into different categories. Moreover, they desire to learn other prepositions by using this method. Last but not least, preposition teaching based on conceptual metaphor provides teachers a new way to instruct English preposition. The new method changes the passive preposition learning situation and it can make teachers confident to deal with related problems.Though this thesis provides a new method for preposition learning, some limitations still exist. English prepositions adopted in this paper are just on and in, many other prepositions are not mentioned. Besides, the period of the treatment is relatively limited because of the teaching schedule. If more time was given, more results may find out in the instruction. Meanwhile, compared with the students in college or senior high school, the students in junior high school are relatively low; hence, the outcomes of the thesis are hard to generalize.