An Empirical Study Of Senior High School Students’ Acquisition Of English Phrasal Verbs:from The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Vocabulary,as the carrier of ideas and expressions,plays an important role in language learning.Vocabulary learning is the most basic way of improving language learners’ language skills and also an effective way of improving language learners,overall language proficiency.English phrasal verbs(verb+particle),as the indispensable part of vocabulary,are made up of verbs and particles,which have strong combination ability and rich vocabulary connotations leading to diverse types and complicated senses,and have become a great barrier to learning English for language learners.However,traditional teaching method of phrasal verbs tending to urge students to learn phrasal verbs by repetitive recitation,totally has ignored profound cultural connotations behind language forms.Over the years,scholars at home and abroad have devoted themselves to exploring the ways of phrasal verbs learning and made many researches about phrasal verbs from the perspective of syntax,semantics,cognition and metaphor,most of which have taken college students or high vocational students as research objects,few of which have selected senior high school students,finding that CMT(conceptual metaphor theory)instruction on phrasal verbs learning led to good results.So this thesis attempts to draw samples from senior high school students,a new group of learners,as subjects to conduct an empirical study of their acquisition of English phrasal verbs and explore effective ways of phrasal verbs learning.This research is conducted by quantitative and qualitative research method and aims to see whether conceptual metaphor theory can exert its effects on the learning of English phrasal verbs for senior high school students.In addition,SPSS 21.0 is used for analyzing data.The questions discussed in this thesis are as follows:(1)What effects does the teaching means based on conceptual metaphor theory have on senior high school students’ interest in the learning of English phrasal verbs?(2)What effects does the teaching means based on conceptual metaphor theory have on senior high school students’ proficiency in English phrasal verbs?The subjects of this study are two parallel classes of senior grade two in the fifth High School of Loudi.The experimental group is made up of 24 boys and 30 girls,while the control group is made up of 26 boys and 28 girls.The experimental group is taught with conceptual metaphor theory but the control group with traditional lexical method.The questionnaire author designs aims to check out whether conceptual metaphor theory can provoke students’ interest in the learning of English phrasal verbs.The pretest is conducted to see whether there are significant differences between students’ vocabulary proficiency in phrasal verbs learning in two classes.Combined with the results of post-test,the study tries to find out the effects of the teaching means based on conceptual metaphor theory on the phrasal verbs learning for senior high school students.After the analysis of experiment data,this study draws some conclusions as follows:1.Compared with control group,experimental group shows greater interest on phrasal verbs learning.2.Compared with control group,students in experimental group have improved their academic performance in phrasal verbs learning and conceptual metaphor theory can stimulate senior high school students’acquisition of English phrasal verbs.This research reveals that conceptual metaphor theory is effective for senior high school students in phrasal verbs learning,contributing to the understanding and the use of phrasal verbs and provides an effective way of learning phrasal verbs for senior high school students.