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An Empirical Study On Teaching Idioms With Rhymes In Metaphorical Idioms

Posted on:2016-01-13Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y XiaoFull Text:PDF
GTID:2295330470973230Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The study of English vocabulary teaching in the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics mainly includes two aspects which are semantic extension and sound extension. There are two aspects influencing the efficiency of English idiom learning. They are semantic aspect and sound aspect. The semantic aspect is about the difference between the literal meaning and the metaphorical meaning of the idioms. The sound aspect is about the phonological phenomena. For students English idiom learning is not an easy work. This is caused by two aspects. So far, most Cognitive Linguists focus on the semantic motivation of English vocabulary, and there is only a small number of researches on the phonological motivation. Some studies found that idioms with alliterations can be remembered by students more easily. And researches suggest that making the students understand the metaphorical meaning of the idioms and pay attention to the phonological phenomenon can let the students memorize idioms more effectively, therefore, the present study made an experiment of English idioms teaching on the employees from storage department in Sichuan Petrochemical Company from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics. The subjects are divided into the Experimental Groups and the Controlled Groups. The aim of the study is mainly to explore the positive effects that metaphorical meaning and phonological phenomena can make in idioms learning from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics. The findings are as follows: 1) Idioms with alliteration can be more easily learned than those idioms without alliteration. 2) The involvement of the teachers in making students pay attention to alliteration is more effective than no intervention. 3) The involvement of the teachers in making students know the conceptual metaphors of the idioms is more effective than no intervention. Thus, in future English idioms teaching, teachers should try to point out the metaphorical meanings of the idioms. And teachers should also pay more attention to teaching phonological phenomena to guide the students to categorize these idioms and make them learn the idioms more effectively and also make the students achieve the cognition and understanding of idioms and other language phenomenon. In this way, they can learn idioms and other linguistic phenomena in the limited time more effectively.
Keywords/Search Tags:English idiom, Metaphor, Prototype, Figure-ground theory, Semantic extension, Sound extension
PDF Full Text Request
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