An Empirical Study On Conceptual Metaphor Theory And College English Idiom Teaching

English idioms are an essential and significant part of English. A good command of idioms is a sign of highly proficent use of English. It is admitted that for EFL Chinese learners, English idioms learning is full of difficulties and endless efforts in the study. According to the traditional view, the meanings of the idioms are non-compositional while cognitive linguistics insistss that conceptual metaphor knowledge can provide a very good approach for the learning of English idioms.The thesis provides an empirical study of the effects of teaching conceptual metaphor theory when Chinese EFL learners learn idioms. The present study consisted of a questionnaire, a pretest, idiom teaching, a post-test 1, a post-test 2.61 first-year non-English major students from two classes, experimental group and control group, were involved in the experiment. One class was the experimental group; the other was the control group. The experiment lasted for 18 weeks with the introduction of metaphorical approach in experimental group while a conventional approach in the control group. The experiment has used a questionnaire, pre-test paper and two post-test papers. By means of the analysis of experimental results, three conclusions have been made:.First of all, it is necessary to apply a new teaching method to idiom teaching and learning,Secondly, the introduction of conceptual metaphor is conductive to the learners'short memory of English idioms. Thirdly, the introduction of conceptual metaphor is conductive to the learners' long memory of English idioms.By means of the detailed analysis and conclusion, the author has provided some conductive suggestions for English idiom learners and researchers.