Application Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory In Senior High School English Vocabulary Teaching

Vocabulary teaching is an important part of English language teaching.The amount of vocabulary determines the students’ English level to a great extent.But at present,the traditional vocabulary teaching method still occupies the mainstream position.Under the guidance of this method,students often spend a lot of time on memorizing and reciting words,but it has little effect.Metaphor as a way of thinking some linguists begin to try to establish a connection between metaphor and vocabulary teaching as time goes on,and integrate metaphor into specific vocabulary teaching process.This paper selects two classes of senior two in Xichang No.1 Senior High School as the experimental class and the control class.The experimental class adopts the conceptual metaphor vocabulary teaching method,while the control class adopts the traditional vocabulary teaching method.With the help of SPSS 22.0,through the quantitative analysis of questionnaire of English teachers in Xichang No.1 Senior High School and the pretest and immediate post tests and delayed post test of the experimental class and the control class,this paper mainly discusses two research questions: firstly,whether it is feasible to apply conceptual metaphor in high school English vocabulary teaching or not? Secondly,can the application of conceptual metaphor in high school English vocabulary teaching improve high school students’ English vocabulary performance?After 8 weeks of teaching experiment in one semester,the following conclusions are drawn:First of all,conceptual metaphor can be applied to English vocabulary teaching in high school.General speaking,there are three steps to apply conceptual metaphor in high school English vocabulary teaching.The first step is to introduce the work mechanism of conceptual metaphor.The second step is to give priority to the teaching of prototype meaning of vocabulary;the third step is to explain the extended meanings of the vocabulary with the help of conceptual metaphor.Secondly,conceptual metaphor is able to improve their English vocabulary performance.Senior high school students are able to understand extended meanings of the vocabulary based on the core meaning of vocabulary from the perspective of metaphorical cognition,they can understand English polysemant,preposition,idioms more easily and can memorize them more firmly and more solidly.As a result,the original boring English vocabulary learning turn into lively,and high school students memorize vocabulary from a passive process into an active exploration.