An Experimental Study On The Effect Of Conceptual Metonymic Idea On Promoting The Reading Competence Of Junior High School Students

English reading plays an extremely essential role in English teaching.Promoting language learners’ reading competence is one of the goals of English teaching.In recent years,conceptual metonymy provides a new perspective for English reading teaching from the aspect of cognitive linguistics.Conceptual metonymy is not only a figure of speech but also a thinking pattern.Conceptual metonymy has received more and more concerns and attention.Conceptual metonymy appears in all aspects of language,and it is closely related to the language teaching.However,junior high school English teachers pay little attention to the value and function of conceptual metonymy in reading teaching,let along put such a reading teaching method into practice.Therefor,the author tries to make an experimental study to discuss the following questions:1.To what extent does the teaching of conceptual metonymy affect junior high school students’ metonymic knowledge?2.To what extent does the students’ metonymic knowledge affect their reading comprehension at different levels?The author chooses two classes that are form a junior high school in Guangzhou city to carry out the experiment.The author applied conceptual metonymy to the teaching of English reading in the experimental group,while,the control group is taught in a traditional way.The period of this experiment is 12 weeks.Firstly,a questionnaire is designed to understand the students’ reading habit,reading interest and whether they learn about conceptual metonymy.Secondly,the conceptual metonymy theory-based teaching method only applied to the experimental group,while,the control group is taught by traditional approach.Both groups are taught by the author.At last,post-tests are conducted to see if the students’ understanding of metonymy is improved,and whether the students’ reading competence has been developed.Next,SPSS is used to collect and measure the related results.Based on the data,the research confirms that the application of conceptual metonymy theory can improve the junior high school students’ reading competencewith their development of metonymic thinking.Therefor,the author concludes that the application of conceptual metonymy theory for the English reading teaching of junior high school is feasible,and it also will provide some references for English teachers in their English reading teaching.At last,the author puts forward the pedagogical implications,limitations and suggestions for further study.