The Application Of Image Schema Theory In English Particle Instructions

Particles, as function words, do not belong to any of the inflected grammaticalword classes and play a very important role in English. Due to the complexity of theircollocation and agile usage, particles are generally deemed as very difficult items bothin English teaching and learning.Traditional schools of linguists hold the view that the complex senses of particlesand their complicated collocations are idiomatic and arbitrary. While cognitivelinguists believe that there exist internal relationships among the complex senses ofparticles. Meanwhile, they put forward that image schema theory can fully specify thesemantic network of the particles. In the past several decades, cognitive studies weremainly focused on the theoretical discussion of image schema theory, and only a fewempirical studies explored the effectiveness of the application of image schema theoryin instruction. It is defective in the methodology, that is, the testing processes werealmost incomplete.In this thesis, an empirical study on out was conducted. From the perspective ofcognitive linguistics, the author examined the basic spatial sense of out and concludedit into two types. At the meantime, the author analyzed the metaphorical extensions ofparticle out based on abstract domain such as SOCAIL POSITION, TIME, STATE.Then, an empirical study was carried out, which involved a teaching experiment, aquestionnaire and an interview. The participants are non-English majors from twosophomore classes of College of Textile and Garment, Guangzhou University, with30students in each class at almost the same level. During the teaching process, thecontrol class was taught in the conventional way, while the experiment group wastaught with the help of image schema theory. After4weeks’ instruction, both classeswere tested, and a retest was carried out a month later, with questionnaire andinterview followed in order to find the final result.From the result of the tests, we can see that the experiment class had performedmuch better than the control class. The average score of the experiment group is51, while that of the control group is only34, which is much lower than the former.Therefore, it can be concluded that the application of image schema theory canimprove students’ learning effect of the particles. In retest, the drop figure of correctrate in the experiment group is smaller than that of the control group （4%＜6%）,which shows that the application of image schema theory can prolong students’retention of the particles.In the questionnaire part for the experiment class, more than60%of the studentshold positive views for most questions, which reveal that the new teaching method ishelpful for the students to learn English particles. And in the interview part, thestudents of the experiment class take a positive attitude towards the new method andall of them would like to use the new method in their English learning in the future.The result gives further evidences that the application of image schema theory isbeneficial for students in their learning of English particles.In a word, the application of image schema theory has positive effects ininstruction. The author believes that the teaching method with the application ofimage schema theory will be worthy of being promoted in English teaching.