Metaphorical Cognitive Mode And English Vocabulary Teaching

The Investigation into metaphor can date back to ancient times. It has been a fascinating topic both in linguistic and nonlinguistic fields since Aristotle times. It is commonly believed that metaphor is a linguistic phenomenon, and is merely a rhetorical device in literary works. Since the publication of Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live in 1980, metaphor study has been arousing scholars' interests both home and abroad, mainly from a perspective of cognitive linguistics. Metaphor is more of a matter of thought and action than of a matter of language. Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) put forward by Lakoff and Johnson is a more systematic and advanced theory of cognitive metaphor. They hold that the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. Language is the product of human cognition while metaphor is a tool of it. So it is of great importance to study the role of metaphor, especially conceptual metaphor, in foreign language teaching and learning.Vocabulary teaching, a significant aspect in English instruction, directly influences the quality of foreign language teaching and learning. However, Traditional methodologies of vocabulary teaching focus more on the introduction of word pronunciation, formation, acceptations and the strategies of memorization as well. It fails to solve the radical problem--the comprehension of word meanings. Besides, the cognitive factors in vocabulary teaching are also neglected, not to mention the application of cognitive metaphor theories into teaching practice. Affected by the traditional teaching methods for a long time, our current foreign language vocabulary teaching and learning in colleges is not systematic and perfect. Some problems still exist in practical teaching and learning: the learners' vocabularies are inadequate and without systematisation; the learners neglect the natural meaning connection between words; the learners are confused about the lexical meanings, meaning changes of words, and the meanings items of polysemous words, etc. The main reason for the situation of vocabulary teaching and learning is lack of a new method to effectively improve vocabulary teaching and learning.This research firstly discusses the contemporary studies both abroad and inside China on vocabulary learning strategies and reveals some of the problems facing Chinese EFL learners. This research further carries out an empirical study to testify whether introducing conceptual metaphor theories to TEFL in China can enhance the quality of teaching vocabulary and further facilitate learners' vocabulary acquisition.According to cognitive semantics, metaphor is an important process in extending words' meanings. The study, through experiments, explores effective activities to improve Chinese EFL vocabulary teaching by means of metaphor theory, aiming to provide some valuable reference data to the improvement of vocabulary teaching.Two sophomore classes of as non-English majors at the same proficiency level were chosen in this research with one as experimental class (EC) and the other as the control class (CC). CC was control class, a systematic instruction in the traditional approach in which metaphors was interwoven into the normal language teaching. Namely, the teaching of EC in the present research incorporated the teaching of book. The teaching materials for EC into the content teaching of the text mostly came from the textbook, assisted by theories and examples chosen from metaphor researches. A pretest was carried out on both EC and CC to ensure there was no apparent difference of knowledge about metaphor and metaphoric competence in language output between the two classes before the teaching experiment. A post-test was conducted to test the difference between subjects from EC and CC after eight weeks of teaching experiment. The post-test was to test whether there was a statistically significant difference between EC and CC in their competence of interpreting metaphorical expressions.All the data collected were analyzed by SPSS and the results show that subjects from EC performed better in interpreting and using metaphorical expressions in their language output. Through this research, it is concluded that the approach of applying conceptual metaphors in vocabulary teaching facilitates teachers' vocabulary teaching and further enhance learners' acquisition.The research findings implicate that TEFL teachers should pay more attention to applying conceptual metaphors in EFL teaching and take metaphor as a cognitive instrument instead of only as a rhetorical device, meanwhile highlight the cultivation of the students' metaphoric competence and encourage them to make appropriate use of metaphorical expressions in their language output.