An Experimental Study On The Effects Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory-Based Instruction On Senior High School Students’ Acquisition Of English Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal verbs are one of the difficulties in foreign language teaching.In traditional teaching of phrasal verbs,teachers in China usually enumerate the meanings of phrasal verbs without in-depth interpretation,thus Chinese students cannot master them.This leads to frequent misuse,and even deliberate avoidance of phrasal verbs.Most previous studies give priority to the syntactic function and semantic features of phrasal verbs.They neglect the basic meanings of particles in phrasal verbs,and the rich metaphorical meanings derived from them.These particles play an essential role in promoting the learning of phrasal verbs.With the development of cognitive linguistics,linguists have begun to explore the potential effects of cognitive approach on phrasal verbs teaching,and the encouraging results have been achieved.However,few of those empirical studies shed any light on senior high school students’ lea rning of phrasal verbs.Based on the conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson(1980),an experiment is conducted for investigating the effects of the senior high school students’ acquisition of phrasal verbs.The effects on acquisition of phrasal verbs are explored from two aspects: comprehension and production.This study attempts to answer the following questions: 1)Can conceptual metaphor theory-based instruction better facilitate the senior high school students’ comprehension of the target phrasal verbs,compared with the traditional teaching method? 2)Can conceptual metaphor theory-based instruction better facilitate the senior high school students’ production of the target phrasal verbs,compared with the traditional teaching method? 3)Can conceptual metaphor theory-based instruction stimulate students’ interest in learning target phrasal verbs? Seventy-eight students,from two parallel classes of a senior high school in Heyuan City,Guangdong Province,are selected in this experiment.The study lasts for 8 weeks.The target phrasal verbs are chosen all from the textbooks of participants.Same contents are delivered to participants whereas different teaching methods are used in two groups.The instruction of conceptual metaphor theory is adopted in the experimental group(N=38)while the conventional teaching method is employed in the control group(N=40).Three instruments are utilized in the experiment,namely,tests,questionnaire,and interview.Through the statistical analyses and discussions of the collected data,the major findings are drawn as follows: compared with the traditional teaching method,the instruction based on conceptual metaphor theory can better facilitate senior high school students’ acquisition of target phrasal verbs.To be more specific,the significant improvements are observed in the comprehension and production of target phrasal verbs in the experimental group.In addition,the students in the experimental group show stronger interest in phrasal verbs learning than before.Three pedagogical implications could be derived in this study.Firstly,while teaching phrasal verbs,teachers should try to illustrate the basic meanings of particles through simplified graphs at the beginning,and guide students to understand the basic meanings of phrasal verbs under the cross-domain mapping mechanism of conceptual metaphor,then the extended meanings of phrasal verbs can be derived in turn.Secondly,not every phrasal verb can be well understood from the perspective of metaphor,but conceptual metaphor theory-based instruction can be a desirable supplement to the existing teaching methods of phrasal verbs.Lastly,teachers should help students cultivate metaphorical awareness implicitly,and attach importance to student-centered learning in the teaching process.At the same time,teachers should not neglect the improvement of their metaphorical competence.