A Study On The Application Of Conceptual Metaphor In Medical English Vocabulary Teaching

Setting some specialty-related or career-oriented English courses is a component of the inter-disciplinary-talent cultivation in higher education.Thus,the course of Medical English is in the course list of many medical colleges and universities.Though it is fully acknowledged that medical English is very important in the medical study,research and communication and that medical students are willing to make efforts on medical vocabulary learning,many students,because of the gigantic number of medical English vocabulary and the unsatisfactory results,stop midway and lose their learning enthusiasm and confidence.There should be some change to improve the situation.Therefore,exploring how to improve students' understanding and memorizing ability of medical vocabulary has become an inevitable trend in teaching.Conceptual metaphor,as a means of cognition,is helpful in English vocabulary learning.Based on it,the research of infusing conceptual metaphor into the medical vocabulary teaching is carried out to verify whether it can be an impetus in the students' understanding and remembering the meaning of medical vocabulary.Taking “Conceptual metaphor can significantly improve the effectiveness of medical vocabulary teaching” as the hypothesis,the author carried out an empirical research in the two classes of Grade 2016 majoring in laboratory science in Fujian Health College.Of the two classes,one was experiment class and the other was control class.At the initial stage of the research,questionnaires were used to find out the current learning situation,teaching and learning methods of the medical English vocubuary among teachers and students.SPSS data analysis was adopted to compare the pre-experiment and post-experiment exams between the two classes and an interview was done in the experiment class to check the change of attitudes towards the medical English vocabulary.The results show as follows: 1)The achievements of the two classes are significantly different(P=0.030 ? 0.05),and the medical vocabulary teaching based on conceptual metaphor can have better teaching effect than that of traditional one.2)The students in the experimental class have taken a more active attitude on medical vocabulary learning than that before the experiment.The findings illustrate that the medical vocabulary teaching based on conceptual metaphor can further motivate medical students' initiative and improve learning efficiency,thus to provide practical basis for medical colleges and universities on medical ESP or EOP teaching.