A Study Of The Application Of Conceptual Metaphor To High Vocational College English Vocabulary Teaching

Metaphor is not merely a linguistic phenomenon, but also the result and tool in human beings'cognitive activities. It is also the conceptual system of human thought and behavior. According to Lakoff & Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory, metaphor is a cognitive activity in which human beings comprehend the concepts in one domain in terms of another. Language is the product of human cognition, while metaphor is the cognitive tool for human beings. Thus, studying metaphor from the cognitive perspective can benefit foreign language learning. Foreign language learners can understand different cultures and image schema in the target language through learning metaphor; hence they can use the target language more easily.According to the previous studies by Chinese researchers, the high vocational college English teaching in China are still not systematic, there are many problems existing. For example, many students do not have large vocabulary, and they can not remember vocabulary systematically. They neglect the semantic relations among the words during the learning process, and fail to understand the word meaning change and polysemy. The linguists and both at home and abroad are working on the application of metaphor to foreign language teaching, such as Cameron(1999), Low (1999), Maclennan (1994), Gibbs (1992), Lazer (1996), Liang Xiaobo (2002), Shu Dingfang(2001) and so on. As one of the most important way of vocabulary extension, metaphor has a natural and close relationship with vocabulary teaching. The purpose of this research is to introduce conceptual metaphor into high vocational college English vocabulary teaching and to see if it can improve the learners' vocabulary strategy and effect. Based on the research purpose, the author proposes two research questions:1. Does introducing metaphor into high vocational college English vocabulary teaching improve the learners' comprehension of vocabulary usages?2. Does introducing metaphor into high vocational college English vocabulary teaching change students' vocabulary learning strategies?First of all, this thesis gives a brief introduction of the definition, categorization, working mechanism and philosophy basis of the conceptual metaphor, and then it discusses the correspondence between metaphor and English vocabulary teaching. The author has made the hypothesis that introducing metaphor into high vocational college vocabulary teaching changes students' vocabulary learning strategies and improve the learners' comprehension of vocabulary usages. The subjects in the present study are 54 students majoring in human resources and computer information management respectively from Qinghua IT Certification and Training Centre. The experiment lasts six weeks. In the control class, the teacher uses the traditional teaching method while in the experimental class the teacher adds to metaphor teaching. The author adopts the vocabulary tests combined with questionnaires, giving the subjects pre-test, teaching treatment and post-test. All the data collected are analyzed by the SPSS17.0, the result of the research shows that introducing conceptual metaphor can improve the students'learning strategies and vocabulary usages.According to the study, foreign language learners can memorize and comprehend the vocabulary more easily through metaphor thought. Thus, foreign language teachers can introduce metaphor teaching method into vocabulary teaching, help students develop metaphor competence, and improve their vocabulary learning effectiveness.