The Role Of Conceptual Metaphorical Awareness In Chinese EFL Learners’ Acquisition Of Metaphorical English Idioms

Idioms, seen as essence of language, can best represent a nation’s culture andway of thinking. Therefore, the learning of idioms can not be ignored in any languageacquisition. However, due to their specific features, the learning of idioms has becomean important point as well as a difficult point in the vocabulary learning, especially inthe second vocabulary learning. Since Aristotle, the ancient Greek Philosopher,metaphor has drawn great attention from a large number of scholars over the world. InMetaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson propose the conceptual metaphor theory,which studies metaphor theory in a more systematic and scientific manner and sets offa new round of studies about metaphor. Through empirical studies, Gibbs et al. provethe existence of conceptual metaphor in native speaker’s mind and suggest thefeasibility of applying conceptual metaphor theory in idiom learning. A lot of scholarsalso emphasize the importance of improving metaphor awareness in vocabularyacquisition (Boers,2000). However, the empirical studies of conceptual metaphortheory application into Chinese EFL learners’ idiom acquisition are still trials and arenot extensive.This thesis aims to make an investigation of the role of conceptual metaphoricalawareness in Chinese EFL learners’ idiom acquisition. The research questions are asfollows:(1) How is Chinese EFL learners’ conceptual metaphorical awareness (CMA)correlated with their English idiom learning outcomes?(2) Are there significant differences in English idiom learning outcomesbetween CMA low-score learners and high-score learners?(3) How is the conceptual metaphor-based approach to English idiomteaching accepted by Chinese EFL learners?In this research, one two months’ English idiom teaching experiment was carriedout among freshmen in two natural classes, an experimental class and a controlledclass respectively. In the experimental class, the conceptual metaphor-based English idiom teaching was implemented. In the controlled class, the normal English idiomteaching was implemented. Before the experiment, all the students took a pretest ofCMA and a pretest of English idioms. In the meanwhile, students of the controlledclass received normal English idiom teaching without any conceptual metaphorteaching. After the teaching experiment, all the students took a posttest of CMA and aposttest of English idioms. Besides, students of the experimental class were asked tofinish a questionnaire on the acceptance of the conceptual metaphor-based teaching.Finally, all the data were typed into software SPSS16.0. T test was applied to analyzethe variance of CMA and English idiom outcomes of the two groups. PearsonCorrelation Coefficient was applied to analyze the relationship of CMA and Englishidiom outcomes. In the relationship analysis, the thesis firstly compared the overallrelationship of CMA and English idiom outcomes of the experimental group. Afterthat, students of the experimental class were divided into CMA high-score group andCMA low-score group. Afterwards, Independent Samples T test was again applied toanalyze the variance of English idiom outcomes.The thesis comes to the following conclusions:(1) CMA is positively correlated with the English idiom outcomes, thecorrelation coefficient is0.537;(2) The CMA high-score group perform better than the CMA low-scoregroup in English idiom acquisition;(3) About70%students accept the conceptual metaphor-based approach toEnglish idiom teaching positively.