An Empirical Study On English Preposition Teaching In Junior High Schools Based On Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Although English prepositions are simple,their meanings are rich and they are flexible in use.They play a pivotal role in English learning.They pose a major challenge for English learners and a difficult point in English teaching.A great deal of research has focused on categories,conceptual transfer,and the relationship between metaphor theory and vocabulary teaching.Some studies look into the application of conceptual metaphor theory to English preposition teaching,yet their subjects are mostly college students and high school students.Few studies choose junior high school students as research subjects.Therefore,this study aims to research on the influence of conceptual metaphor theory on English preposition learning in junior high school students.Based on conceptual metaphor theory and input-output hypothesis,this study explores the influence of conceptual metaphor on preposition learning in junior high school students and addresses the following two research questions:1)What are the effects of conceptual metaphor teaching on students' acquisition of prepositions in junior high schools?2)What are the effects of conceptual metaphor teaching on students' interests of preposition learning in junior high schools?This study's subjects involved 104 students from two classes ofZhuangyuan Middle School in Beita District,Shaoyang City(52 students from Experimental Class,and 52 students from Control Class).The duration of the teaching experiment is 6 weeks.Experimental Class adopted conceptual metaphor teaching method for preposition teaching,and Control Class adopted traditional preposition teaching method.A pretest and a post-test were conducted to study the influence of Conceptual Metaphor on English preposition teaching in junior high schools.Data were analyzed by SPSS 21.0.Major findings of this study are as follows: 1)After the experiment,the students in the experimental class showed significant improvement in the understanding and use of English prepositions.In this study,on the premise that there was no significant difference in the pre-test T test between the experimental class and the control class,the post-test scores of the two classes were improved.After the independent sample T test,there was a significant difference in the post-test scores of the two classes.Because the experimental class accepted the English preposition teaching method guided by the conceptual metaphor theory,their overall scores in the post-test were higher than those of the control class.2)After the experiment,the students in the experimental class showed an improved interest in learning English prepositions.The data showed that the students in the experimental class had realized that the meanings of prepositions were extended from spatial meaning,and they were morelikely to classify the meanings of prepositions into different categories,such as spatial domain,time domain,behavior domain,emotion domain,and other more abstract domains.Most of the students also changed their negative feelings about learning English and greatly improved their interest in learning English.Most students hold a positive attitude towards teachers' use of conceptual metaphor to improve their understanding and use of prepositions.The experimental results show that the teaching of English prepositions based on conceptual metaphor theory is effective and feasible.Due to the limitations of objective research conditions,this study still has shortcomings such as short experimental duration and small experimental samples,which need to be further improved in future studies.It can provide some guidance for the further teaching of English prepositions and the expansion of teachers' teaching horizons.