The Application Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory To The Teaching Of English Spatial Preposition In Senior High School

Prepositions are a kind of typical polysemous words in English vocabulary.They are few in number and simple in form,but the meanings of prepositions are abstract and complex.Therefore,English prepositions has long been a major difficulty in English learning.In English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2019 Edition)the importance of English prepositions is mentioned in three sections: Vocabulary Knowledge,Discourse Comprehension and Grammar Items;in Academic Quality Level section,it is stated that “students can recognize and understand the meaning of metaphors and other rhetorical devices used in discourse.” Metaphor bridges the gap between cognition and language and is a useful thinking tool for foreign language learners.Compared to other word classes,prepositions are most easily used for metaphorical mapping,with their initial literal meanings mostly characterizing spatial relations,then metaphorically referring to temporal relations,and then gradually extending to other domains.One of the major functions of conceptual metaphor is to help learners construct a system of knowledge networks and be able to judge the choice of prepositions independently,without having to rely on the memorization of fixed collocations.In other words,students can build up the concepts of space,time,relationship and orientation through conceptual metaphor.This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of conceptual metaphor-based preposition teaching through instructional design for six English prepositions-“in”,“on”,“at”,“over”,“up” and “down” and applying them in practical English preposition review lessons.The research questions are as follows:(1)What are the effects of conceptual metaphor-based teaching on students’ acquisition of English prepositions in senior high school?(2)What are the attitudes of senior high school students towards conceptual metaphor-based preposition teaching?The experiment lasts for six weeks,and the participants are 80 students in two firstyear classes of a senior high school in Nanchong.According to the results of the pre-test,there is no significant difference in the students’ mastery of the six prepositions between the two classes,and the performance of class 5 is slightly lower than that of class 1.Therefore,class 5 is defined as the experimental class to teach prepositions based on conceptual metaphor,and class 1 is used as the control class to teach prepositions by the grammar translation method.Immediately after the 6-week experiment,post-test 1 is applied to the students to test whether there are differences in the effects of the different teaching methods on the acquisition of English prepositions.In addition,a questionnaire is administered to the students in the experimental class to investigate students’ attitudes towards conceptual metaphor-based preposition teaching.Finally,three weeks later,students in experimental class are given a post-test 2 to check the delayed effect of conceptual-metaphor-based preposition teaching.The findings of this study are as follows:(1)conceptual metaphor-based preposition teaching is more effective for students’ acquisition of English prepositions in senior high school.The main reasons are that firstly,conceptual metaphor can help students understand the connection between the various semantics of prepositions;in addition,the image schemas allow the meanings of prepositions to be stored in both the verbal system and image systems,and because the dual-encoded information is easier to remember,conceptual metaphor-based teaching is more helpful to improve learners’ long-term memory of prepositions.(2)Students in the experimental class have a positive attitude toward the conceptual metaphor theory-based preposition teaching.After the experiment,they are more positive in their assessment of their mastery of learned prepositions and their own preposition learning ability.Based on the above findings,the author proposes the following teaching implications:(1)Conceptual-metaphor based teaching can effectively promote students’ preposition learning.In practical teaching,teachers can take it as a supplement to grammar-translation teaching,so that the two complement each other and make the maximum effect.(2)Teachers should pay attention to the connection between multiple semantics of prepositions and guide students to build semantic networks instead of memorizing them.(3)Teachers should focus on developing students’ awareness of metaphors,which will benefit all aspects of their English learning.