Correlation Between Metaphorical Competence Cultivation And English Vocabulary Acquisition Of High School Students

The ways senior high school students acquire vocabulary still remain the passive stage when they attach more importance to words storage than cognition. The research introduces metaphorical theory into English word learning for high school students, combining the frame work of Lakoff & Johnson's Conceptual Metaphorical Theory (CMT) with a four-month metaphor teaching experimental study to explore whether cultivating metaphorical competence is a feasible way for students to acquire English words in width and in depth, hoping to offer some new pedagogies to teaching English words using a metaphorical cognitive strategy.Vocabulary is the base unit to make up a language and also the carrier of a concept in a culture. Metaphor, a way of thinking, is reflected in human daily thought and conceptual system, as a new perspective of understanding things. Thus the world, metaphor, concept and language make up an organic system. Meanwhile the importance of metaphor gives inspiration on language education. It can promote the development of cognitive and linguistic competence of human beings, for language is a manifestation of thinking. For English vocabulary learning, to increase metaphorical competence is of great significance for students'cognitive ability to build up vocabulary cognitive schema and deepen vocabulary meaning and collocation acquisition to enhance words usage efficiency.Based on these metaphorical theories, scholars, at home and broad, get their feet on this field one after another in various respects. Meanwhile, they have reached a consensus on the appraisal that metaphor can facilitate language acquisition more efficiently. Besides, the concept of "metaphorical competence" (MC) was put forward. Danesi (1993:40) stated that MC is the understructure of conceptual fluency as an essential characteristic of native language competence. Many researchers in China also have shown their metaphorical teaching perspectives.However, empirical studies on MC mostly focus on college students and high school students, on the contrast, who dominate primary conceptual construction in English vocabulary acquisition, are neglected. In addition, through a review of previous studies, it displays that there have been few empirical studies to come up with the proposal of how to cultivate MC. And the process, content and scheme of metaphorical competence cultivation (MCC) are still under much controversy, especially for high school students' conceptual MCC, which has not formed an integrated system at home yet.For these reasons, the present paper put Metaphorical Theory into high school English vocabulary teaching and learning with a combination research of theoretical study and teaching experiment method, which aims to explore the correlation between MCC and English words acquisition for high school students. So the empirical study plans to become an effective complement of empirical study in English vocabulary acquisition.The research questions to be addressed in the study are the following:(1) What is the relationship between metaphor and vocabulary learning? (2) How do high school students understand metaphors? (3) Might we get corroboration that MCC does have great significance in vocabulary learning by means of an experimental teaching study in a high school? (4) If the empirical study were successful, what of cultivation strategies can help metaphor improve competence of vocabulary acquisition?In order to verify the proposal that the new vocabulary approach of cultivating metaphorical competence be more effective than any traditional vocabulary learning, we carried out an experiment study conducted in Lveyang Tianjin Senior High School, where 2 parallel classes of Senior One are involved. The results of the comparison of the two groups'performances, collected and analyzed by SPSS 13.0, indicated that students can enrich their width and depth of the knowledge of vocabulary by the cultivation of metaphor competence. It yielded the following findings:(1) MCC and high school students' vocabulary acquisition have a positive significance correlation. Metaphor can accelerate the progress of word conceptual formation. (2) Although most students understand metaphorical collocation over-depending on Chinese culture background, they can recognize metaphors in a certain context quickly. (3) Some inspirations of instruction, especially in conventional metaphor, are given to vocabulary learning. (4) Students consult the dictionary less effectively in dealing with the multiple meanings of words without etymology and systematical lexical item presented; in spite of conceptual fluency improvement in language, students are still lack of productive skills of metaphorical expressing competence at vocabulary level.This thesis is made up of five chapters.The first chapter is a general introduction of the background of the study, in which the need and rationale of the research as well as its significance are narrated.Chapter 2 is the literature review, including three main branches, namely, current study of vocabulary acquisition, metaphor theory and metaphorical competence. Among them metaphorical studies at home and broad are expatiated from its definitions, essences, functions, three vital theories to mechanism and metaphor understanding. After a review of the previous researches, the feasibilities and necessity are made possible to cultivate students'metaphorical competence.Chapter 3 presents the methodology, a detailed description of the experimental study of cultivating metaphor for high school students in English word learning.Chapter 4 is to present results together with the discussion.At last, the conclusion chapter consists of the major findings, implications and recommendations for future research.