A Study On Vocabulary Teaching In High School From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

The General High School English Curriculum Standards promulgated at the end of 2017 marked the beginning of the new curriculum reform and it provided the direction for the curriculum reform of the English subject."Curriculum 2017" clearly puts forward the requirement to cultivate the language ability of high school students.Language ability is composed of five communication modes: listening,speaking,reading,writing,and reading.All of these five communication modes are based on vocabulary.It can be seen that vocabulary plays a vital role in English learning.This thesis mainly discusses three research questions: 1.What ways can we use to combine conceptual metaphor with high school English vocabulary teaching? 2.Can conceptual metaphor vocabulary teaching effectively promote English vocabulary learning for high school students? 3.Can conceptual metaphor vocabulary teaching increase interest of high school students in English vocabulary learning? In order to verify these three questions,the author chose two classes in Grade 2 of a middle school in Hanzhong City,Shaanxi Province as experimental class and control class,respectively,and the conduct teaching experiments lasts about a semester.Before the experiment,a pre-vocabulary test and a questionnaire survey were conducted.During the teaching experiment,the author used the conceptual metaphor vocabulary teaching method in the experimental class and the traditional vocabulary teaching method in the control class.After the experiment,the author conducted post-vocabulary test and interviewed 6 students in the experimental class.Finally,the SPSS22.0 system software was used to analyze the results and statistics of the pre-test and post-test between the experimental class and the control class.Based on the results of the pre-experimental questionnaire survey and the post-experimental interview results,the following conclusions were concluded:First,the application of conceptual metaphors to English vocabulary teaching in high school includes the following steps: First,the teachers should explain the basic meaning and the extended metaphorical meaning of a word,and then guide students to summarize conceptual metaphor vocabulary.Second,conceptual metaphor vocabulary teaching methodcan effectively promote the English vocabulary score of high school students.Third,conceptual metaphor vocabulary teaching is helpful in improving high school students' learning interest.In addition,teachers can pay more attention to the cultivation of metaphorical thinking of high school students.Forming metaphorical thinking helps high school students understand the basic meaning and its metaphorical meaning of an English word more easily.It also makes it easier to remember words more firmly.In short,high school students can understand the basic meaning of vocabulary before trying to associate the metaphorical meaning of vocabulary.The formation of metaphorical thinking can help students predict the meaning of polysemes in different contexts,and it can also help students more easily understand the expression of phrases and slang in English.Conceptual metaphors makes the boring vocabulary learning fun,which encourages high school students to change from passively memorizing words to autonomously exploring,studying vocabulary,mastering rules,and do half the work with double results.