An Empirical Study On The Application Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory To High School English Vocabulary Teaching

The English Curriculum Standards for General High School(Revised Edition of 2020)suggests that “the high school English curriculum should help to develop the students’ core competencies of English subject such as language ability,cultural awareness,thinking quality and learning ability.” Among them,language ability is the basic element,consisting of five parts: listening,speaking,reading,writing,and viewing(Mei,2018),and Zimmerman(1997)argues that one’s abilities of listening,speaking,reading,writing,and viewing are actually reflected by one’s vocabulary level and proficiency.The significance of vocabulary is thus evident and vocabulary teaching should be the top priority of English teaching.English vocabulary teaching under the New Curriculum should be systematic in terms of the construction of vocabulary and semantic networks and the systematization of vocabulary knowledge.Conceptual Metaphor Theory in Cognitive Linguistics can instruct students to focus on the deep connection between multiple word meanings and the cognitive motivation behind the formation of meaning,which is helpful for them to construct semantic network of words with metaphorical thinking.Therefore,this paper aims to explore the effectiveness of conceptual metaphor theory in teaching English vocabulary in high school,and tries to solve the research questions:(1)Is vocabulary teaching under the guidance of Conceptual Metaphor Theory beneficial to the improvement of vocabulary performance?(2)Could the vocabulary teaching guided by Conceptual Metaphor Theory improve students’ interest?(3)Does vocabulary teaching guided by Conceptual Metaphor Theory help to improve long-term memory?The author’s teaching experiment has been centered on these questions.The subjects of the study were students of class11 and class16,Grade Two of S High School in Huaibei City,with class 11 as the control class being taught in regular vocabulary teaching mode,and the class 16 as the experimental class in the Conceptual Metaphor Theory mode.After the four-month experiment,the results of the questionnaire,pre-test,immediate tests,and delayed test were analyzed by SPSS(19.0)statistical tool for data analysis.Before the experiment,the questionnaire survey aimed to understand the subjects’interest in English vocabulary acquisition,memory efficiency,and comprehension of Conceptual Metaphor knowledge.The pre-test aimed to test whether the vocabulary levels of the two classes were basically the same and whether they met the requirements for subjects selection.In the experiment,instant tests 1 and 2 were designed to compare the dynamic changes of vocabulary learning effects of the two classes horizontally and vertically.After the experiment,a delayed post-test and interview were conducted at a one month interval to figure out whether the vocabulary teaching model could enhance students’long-term vocabulary memory and learning interest.It has been found in this research that:(1)The results of immediate tests 1 and 2showed that the experimental class’ s grades are gradually higher than those of the control class,and the difference in vocabulary scores between the two classes is increasingly obvious.That is to say,the vocabulary teaching model guided by the Concept Metaphor Theory is conducive to the improvement of high school students’ vocabulary scores.(2)The delayed post test results showed that the experimental class achieved significantly higher scores than the control class,indicating that the vocabulary memory effects of the experimental class was better than that of the control class,and that vocabulary teaching based on Conceptual Metaphors is beneficial for long-term memory.(3)The interview results showed that the interest of the experimental class students in vocabulary learning has been greatly improved,that is,vocabulary teaching under the guidance of Conceptual Metaphor Theory is conducive to improving students’ interest in vocabulary learning.It can be proved to some extent that the English vocabulary teaching method based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory has feasibility and effectiveness.