An Empirical Study On Image Schema And English Verb-particle Construction Teaching

Verb-particle constructions are usually defined as idiomatic combinations of a verb and an adverb, or a verb and a preposition (or verb with both adverb and preposition) (Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Phrasal verbs). They are persuasively used in modern English, which constitute an essential part of everyday communication. Therefore, learners find them vital for understanding. However, Verb-particle constructions are difficult and troublesome for learners to master because of its complexity of meanings and structures. Since most verb-particle constructions have idiomatic meanings which can not be inferred from the superficial combinations, they form a great obstacle for learners to master.The present study, on the basis of Rudzka-Ostyn's teaching approach, proposes applying image schema and metaphor in the explanation of basic meanings and extended meanings of particles. This study makes use of qualitative and quantitative approaches including two questionnaires and two tests to verify if the cognitive approach is more effective than the traditional approach in practice. It can be inferred on the analysis of the data from two questionnaires and two tests that the experimental group has made more progress than the control group. In this way, we can tell the cognitive approach is more effective than the traditional one. As a result, the hypothesis of the experiment can be verified by the analysis, that is, the cognitive teaching approach is more effective than the traditional one in teaching and learning verb-particle construction.This study discovers the students'problems of learning and applying verb-particle constructions, on the basis of this, a new teaching approach of verb-particle construction is proposed. That is, the basic meanings and extended meanings of particles of verb-particle constructions are introduced to students with some basic principles of cognitive linguistics such as image schema and metaphor. After a term of practice of this approach, students can gain a deeper understanding of verb-particle constructions and can gain the ability of applying verb-particle constructions in various contexts more flexibly and the ability of figuring out meanings of new verb-particle constructions more effectively. This study provides an effective approach of learning verb-particle constructions for Chinese students, and it can improve the learning efficiency of learning verb-particle constructions and it can improve the teaching efficiency of teachers too.