The Analysis And Evaluation Of The Textbook New Standard English(FLTRP) From The Perspective Of The Applied Research Of Metaphor

Metaphor has been studied for around 2,000 years.Traditional views on metaphor regarded it as a specific rhetorical device,while cognitive view considered it as a way of thinking.With the development of the theory,metaphor has grown rapidly in many disciplines.In the year of 1999,the publication of Researching and Applying Metaphor(Cameron,L.& Low,G.,1999)marked that the study of metaphor had turned from the theory to practice.From then on,metaphor has popularized in many application research fields(Cameron,L.& Maslen,R.,2010).Applying the theories of metaphor into the field of the second language teaching and learning has been the focus of the applied research of metaphor.Many researchers lay emphasis on the importance of metaphor in second language teaching and learning.In their study,metaphoric competence is taken for the core element which constitutes the language communicative ability(Littlemore,2006)and of equal importance with language competence and communicative competence(Wang Yin,2004).In order to cultivate the language learners' metaphoric competence to promote their communicative language ability,the present research applies the theories of metaphor into the analysis and evaluation of textbooks from the perspective of the applied research of metaphor,aiming to provide a new reference for the design,selection and evaluation of textbooks.As the primary medium,textbook itself is the main reference for foreign language teachers to organize their classroom activities and for language learners to acquire language knowledge and modify language output.Despite textbooks for foreign language teaching and learning have increased in numbers,the researches on evaluation of textbooks are unsatisfactory.This present study assumes that it is of great significance and valuable innovation to conduct a research on textbook evaluation via metaphor analysis.This study chooses the textbook New Standard English(1-5)(Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2015),which is widely used in majority of high schools in China,as the research object and carries out a quantitative and qualitative analysis concerning the issue of metaphor universality among its five volumes.The specific research questions cover such aspects as metaphor density,its correlation with grades of different volumes and with genres of texts,and metaphor types involved in the textbook.To identify the metaphorical expressions in 60 passages(12 texts per volume),Metaphor Identification Procedure(Pragglejaz Group,2007)is employed.The results show that metaphor density of the selected texts in five books of New Standard English is relatively low and metaphor density varies a lot according to the grades of different volumes and genres of texts.Three types of metaphor are analyzed in New Standard English: conceptual metaphor and linguistic metaphor,similarity-based metaphor and similarity-created metaphor,conventional metaphor and novel metaphor.The study suggests that relevant knowledge about metaphor should be involved in the textbooks and the metaphor density of textbooks also should be improved in order to cultivate the language learners' metaphoric competence.