A Study Of English Culture Teaching Based On Conceptual Metaphor In Senior High School

In 2003,cultivation of “culture consciousness” was incorporated into the High School English Curriculum Standards by Education Ministry.Since then,researches on English culture teaching have mushroomed.A search through educational material makes it obvious that English teaching in Chinese Senior High still focuses on language knowledge such as vocabulary and grammar,neglecting the importance and strategy of culture teaching.“Language is the carrier of culture,it is impossible to master a foreign language without culture consciousness.” “ In some ways,Language teaching is culture teaching.” Obviously,it is imperative to explore practical strategies for culture teaching.Since the 1980 s,the nature of metaphor has been uncovered that metaphor is more a kind of cognitive tool that a language phenomenon.It’s rooted in people’s objective experience,permeates the whole language system and reflects the cultural essence of a nation.Metaphor is a bond between language and culture.“Metaphor constitutes culture;metaphor delivers culture and metaphor develops with the advancement of society.” Hence,through cognitive interpretation of metaphors in foreign language,learners can master the cultural information of foreign language.Given this,the author attempts to explore the English culture teaching of Senior School according to Conceptual Metaphor Theory(CMT).First,this thesis reviews the literature on the theory of conceptual metaphor and culture teaching.It mainly discusses the essential attribute,the working mechanism,three categories and four characteristics of CMT.And it also summarizes the the connotation and methods of English culture teaching.All of these lay a solid theoretical foundation for this research.Next,the thesis emphatically analyzes the application of CMT in English culture teaching.Based on Chinese professor Guang-lei Chen’s cultural classification--semantic culture,syntactic culture and pragmatic culture,and combined with schema and mapping of CMT working mechanism,it explains vocabulary,syntax and communicative language only topresent the cultural connotation of foreign language.Finally,as metaphorical competence consists of the three facets as recognizing metaphor,understanding metaphor and creating metaphor,some effective ways of cultivating metaphorical competence are proposed,with the help of delicate examples like reading comprehension,vocabulary teaching and translation practice,so as to ultimately reach the goal of raising cultural consciousness.All in all,this study will provide senior English culture teaching with effective strategies.It also broadens students’ horizons and stimulates their interest in English culture learning.As the thesis is just an tentative research,more thorough study remains to be done and the relative empirical studies should be carried out in the future.