A Study On The Application Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

English writing is the process by which human beings externalize the conceptualization of the experiential world in English.Therefore,in addition to language level,writing ability is also related to the conceptual ability of human beings dealing with the external world.Conceptual metaphor is an important tool for people to perceive the world and cognitive output.In short,there is a correlation between writing ability and the acquisition of conceptual metaphor theory.In recent years,the conceptual metaphor theory has been applied to foreign language teaching,exploring the important meaning of the theory on teaching practice in the study of applied linguistics.As for exploring the improvement of writing ability,researchers conduct studies from different perspectives under the guidance of conceptual metaphor theory,such as Deng Xumei(2013),Cao Man(2011)and etc.However,few of them concentrate on elementary education.Conceptual metaphor,as an important cognitive means to understand the world,still needs to be further explored that whether it can improve writing ability.Based on the conceptual metaphor theory of Lakoff and Johnson,this paper mainly discusses three questions:Question 1: Can students improve their writing ability effectively after learning conceptual metaphor theory in senior high school?Question 2: In what aspects can students improve their writing ability(content,organization,vocabulary and language use)?Question 3: Which aspects can students improve better among the aspects of improvement?In the research,class 22 and class 24 of Ruzhou Middle school are selected as experimental subjects.Class 22(50 students),as the experimental class,receives writing classes under the guidance of conceptual metaphor theory,while in class 24(50 students),as the control class,the normal teaching method is utilized.Before the experiment,the pre-test is implemented to examine whether there is a significant difference between the two classes.After the experiment,the post-test and interview are employed.In this interview,15 students are selected in random.In the end,the data is analyzed and discussed through SPSS 26.0 software.According to this empirical research,there are some conclusions that we can come to: firstly,students’ writing ability can be improved effectively with the application of conceptual metaphor theory.Secondly,the acquisition of conceptual metaphor has an effect on vocabulary,language use,content and organization of writing.Based on the theory,vocabulary has more abundant connotations,language presented is more diverse,content matches the assigned topic better and organization can be more coherent and logical.Thirdly,in the four aspects,students improve better in content,subsequently,organization,language use and vocabulary.Integrating conceptual metaphor with English writing class is still at an experimental stage.Due to the time and knowledge constraints,shortcomings of this article are inevitable.Accordingly,the researcher puts forward some implications as well as limitations of the study.