Effects Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory Based Teaching Approach On Senior High School Students’ English Idiom Acquisition

This study was undertaken to investigate the influence of conceptual metaphor theory based teaching approach on senior high school students’ English idiom learning.The entire experiment consists of a pretest,a teaching experiment,an immediate test,and a delayed post-test.The following research questions are addressed in this study:1.What effects does the teaching approach based on conceptual metaphor theory produce on the senior high school students’ acquisition of English idioms?2.As compared with the traditional teaching method,what impacts does the conceptual metaphor theory based teaching approach produce on the acquisition of English idioms by senior high school students?3.What feedbacks do senior high school students have towards the conceptual metaphoric methods?Ninety students of Grade three in a high school in Nan Tong participated in the study,including one control class(CC)and one experimental class(EC).A pretest was conducted in a gesture to evaluate students’ idiom learning competence.As the results shows,their competence is at a low level,with no significant difference.During the next six weeks,the researcher employed the conceptual metaphor theory based teaching approach and the traditional method to teach the EC and CC respectively.After the six weeks’ teaching,a post-test was conducted to check the effects of different teaching approaches on students’ acquisition of English idioms.Moreover,feedbacks about the new teaching approach from the EC were also collected and analyzed.The major findings are summarized as follows:First,applying conceptual metaphor theory to the teaching of English idioms has produced a positive effect on students’ acquisition and use of English idioms.In comparison with the pretest,it was apparent that students in EC gained significantly much higher scores in the delayed post-test.Second,as compared with the traditional teaching method,the conceptual metaphor based teaching approach can help to better improve students’ learning and use of English idioms.In the post-test,EC outperformed CC significantly.Last but not least,according to students’ feedbacks,enhancing senior high school students’awareness of conceptual metaphor has both positive and negative effects upon the learning of English idioms,which is due to some personal reasons,for example,the individual experience and knowledge.However,employing the cognitive linguistic concepts of conceptual metaphor is generally positive in English idioms learning.In terms of the immediate test and the delayed test,learners in the experimental group are more competent in dealing with idioms,especially the new ones.This research may have some potential limitations.First of all,the number of the samples and the idioms employed in the research was limited,and the time of teaching and learning idioms was also so limited as not to be generalized to all the senior high students.Secondly,the research only focused on high school students’ idioms learning.It remains to be seen whether the conceptual metaphoric teaching can also be applied to other fields,for instance,learning English phrasal verbs,proverb acquisition,writing,reading and so forth.Finally,due to the researcher’s lack of experience and the limited knowledge of idioms,not all the expressions can be taught through conceptual metaphor.Taken together,the findings of the study suggest that the application of conceptual metaphor theory exerts a positive impact on students’ English idiom learning and teachers’teaching.Finally,further implications for English idiom teaching and learning are discussed in this study.