A Study On The Metaphorical Meaning Teaching Of Chinese Plant Words For Learners With English Background

In recent years,Chinese language has attracted more foreigner’s attention from all over the world,and the number of foreign learners who come to China to learn Chinese are increasing,which brings more challenges for the Chinese language teachers.The teaching of Chinese as a foreign language is not only from its phonetics,vocabulary and grammar elements,but also from its cultural factors,especially for those who learn Chinese for its extensive and profound cultural knowledge.Plants can be seen everywhere in our daily life as well as the plant words can be seen in every language.The plant words is a special kind of words for which has rich metaphorical meanings beyond its basic meanings,these words are often used in literature and our daily communication.Plant words are rich both in Chinese and English,but the meaning of the same plant word in the two languages is not necessarily the same,so for Chinese learners with English background will misuse some words for the differences between two languages’ culture,which leads to the barriers of communication.Therefore,teachers are required not only to teach the basic meaning of plant words,but also to teach students the metaphorical meaning of plant words based on cultural contrast.This thesis mainly studies Chinese learners with English background on the basis of comparing the similarities and differences between Chinese and English plant words.The paper studies and analyzes the learning and using of Chinese plant words,and also puts forward some constructive suggestions on the teaching of metaphorical meaning of Chinese plant words.This paper mainly consists of six chapters,that is :Chapter one is about introduction,which included three sections,the first section is about the reason and the meaning of this paper.The second section introduces the literature review,in which firstly involved in the study of metaphor,both from the definition and the classification of metaphor,and secondly involved in the comparative analysis of metaphorical meanings between English and Chinese plants words well as the classification of the plants words.The last section is about the ideas,methods and innovations of this paper.The second chapter is a comparative analysis of the metaphorical meanings of Chinese and English plant words.This chapter has two main parts.The first part is the statistics and screening of the vocabulary outline and the plant words in various textbooks,and selects special plant words.The second part is to compare the Chinese and English metaphorical meanings of the selected plant words,mainly from the three aspects of Chinese and English plant word metaphorical meaning coincidence,metaphorical meaning misplacement and metaphorical meaning deficiency.Then it analyzes the reasons for the differences in metaphorical meanings between Chinese and English plant words from six aspects: geographical location,myths and legends,religious beliefs,cultural concepts,phonetic system and social customs.The third chapter is the investigation and analysis about English background learners’ learning of Chinese plant words.A questionnaire is designed based on the contrastive analysis of the metaphorical meanings between Chinese and English plant words in chapter two,the respondents are mainly Chinese learners with English background from various colleges and universities.In the course of the survey,individual students were interviewed to gain an in-depth understanding of the difficulties in learning Chinese plant words with metaphorical meanings.Then the paper analyzes the questionnaires and interviews,and summarizes the reasons of errors in students’ learning of plant words.The fourth chapter is the teaching design of plants words to Chinese learners with English background.There are three main parts in this chapter.The first part is the metaphorical teaching case of primary and intermediate classes based on the student’s misunderstanding and levels of students’ learning.The second part is the teaching and training of plant words in the classroom,which is recorded and the text is restored after class.The third part is the observation and analysis of the classroom teaching practice,which is mainly from three aspects: teachers’ behavior,students’ behavior and the interaction between two languages.The fifth chapter is the teaching suggestion of Chinese metaphorical plants words.According to the current situation of the teaching of Chinese plant words and teachers’ own teaching experiences and observations,suggestions are put forward on teacher show to teach plants words,students how to learn plant words and scholars how to compile textbooks.The last part is the conclusion,which reviews and summarizes the thesis and points out the deficiency and the space for improvement.