An Application Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory To The Teaching Of English Writing

Aristotle thought that metaphor was a figure of speech, aiming to make languagemore vivid and lively, and it was only used by the cultivated people. But since thepublishing of Metaphors We Live By written by Lakoff and Johnson, a new cognitiveapproach has broadened our understanding of the nature of metaphor. According to thisnew idea, metaphor is not only a rhetoric method used by cultivated people, but also away for ordinary people to understand and experience the world. It is commonly usedin our daily communication, and everybody can use it, no matter the person is alinguist or a common farmer. Since language is the product of human cognition andconceptual metaphor is a tool of it, it is necessary and important to apply conceptualmetaphor theory to foreign language teaching.On the other hand, writing, as an important skill, is also very difficult for thestudents to learn. Traditionally, writing was instructed in the process-based approachand product-based approach. Recently many researchers and educators have tried toapply conceptual metaphor theory to the teaching of English writing, and found thatteaching the students some knowledge about conceptual metaphor theory can improvetheir writing more effectively than traditional ways of teaching.In this thesis, the researcher took an experiment on56subjects who werefreshmen and from two natural classes of the Art Department in Chongqing NormalUniversity Foreign Trade and Business College. The two classes were randomlychosen as the control class and the experimental class, receiving different modes ofteaching. The control class received the traditional way of teaching. And theexperimental class received a seven-step teaching design with the application ofconceptual metaphor theory with the purpose to answer the following three researchquestions:1Can the students who have received the metaphorical kind of teaching improvetheir writing more effectively than the students who have not? 2Can the students who have learned some knowledge about conceptual metaphortheory use more metaphorical expressions than the students who haven not learnedanything about conceptual metaphor? In other words, can the students’ metaphoriccompetence be promoted after the teaching of conceptual metaphor theory?3Is the teaching design valid and practical?The researcher’s experimental results show that after teaching the students someknowledge about conceptual metaphor theory, the students can improve their writingmore effectively than those who receive the traditional way of teaching. And they canuse more metaphorical expressions and fewer nonnative-like expressions in theircomposition after learning some knowledge about conceptual metaphor theory. Andtheir metaphoric competence has also been promoted. Thus the teaching design is validand practical.So this thesis holds that we should not ignore the importance of enhancinglearners’ metaphoric competence in terms of conceptual metaphor. In other words,besides teaching writing in the traditional way, teachers should also introduce someknowledge about conceptual metaphor theory to the students and help them tounderstand and use metaphorical expressions properly in the target language, thusimproving their writing effectively.