Integration Of Metaphor Ability Training And Lexical Chunks Teaching For Vocational College Students

The functions of vocabulary are of great importance for any human language system. A great amount of vocabulary enables the information to be exchanged by language effectively and efficiently. The acquisition of vocabulary is necessary for any stage in learning a language. Here we can illustrate the point of view of Lewis,"Vocabulary acquisition is the center of the second language learning, which plays the most important role"(Lewis,1993). But it is easy to notice that no matter how to do in the process of students’learning or teachers’teaching, the result is not very satisfying for the students to master foreign language vocabulary. Except for this, from the aspect of language competence, it is easy to find that non-English majors make little progress in their English learning. And very often the persistent errors appeared because of vocabulary in their oral, translation or written work. Many researchers are looking for the effective ways in solving the problem.Metaphor is everywhere in language. Cognitive linguistics highlights the importance and the ubiquity of metaphor in language. Cognitive linguistics suggests that language is systematically constructed and developed during the process of human beings’experiencing and functioning in the external world. Metaphor is traditionally regarded as a figure of speech parasitic on language, it is a means of thought and life of human beings, a means people perceive and experience the world. Metaphor is a cognitive tool. Language is metaphorical in nature. Based on these, cognitive metaphor theory and practice propose that the ability to acquire, produce, and interpret metaphors in the target language is vital to language learning. Gardner and Winner (1978) call it "metaphoric competence (MC)", a term analogous to Chomsky’s linguistic competence and Hymes’communicative competence, which is now attracting more and more attention from language researchers. Metaphorical competence, as the complement to linguistic competence and communicative competence, is a much higher demand to language learners.In these years, roles of lexical chunk instruction in English teaching have gained wide attention of linguists and language teaching experts. Researchers find lexical chunk instruction can lessen students’burden and make students master vocabulary effectively. Meanwhile it can improve the ability of language competence. We can not use the same efficient way in English teaching again and again. If we employ the integration of metaphor ability training and lexical chunks teaching into the acquisition of English vocabulary, it is supposed to improve the efficiency of English vocabulary acquisition and release the problem of errors appearing in language use. However the empirical research in this aspect is very small, and most of them are for the undergraduate in university. There is less for the students in vocational colleges. By means of the integration of metaphor ability training and lexical chunks teaching experiment on the freshmen of Vocational Institute of Technology in Heilongjiang Land Reclamation in Harbin, this thesis aims to explore the effect of integration of metaphor ability training and lexical chunks teaching instruction in improving the efficiency of students’English vocabulary acquisition and in the improving of language competence in vocational colleges. The experiment of instruction of integration of metaphor ability training and lexical chunks teaching lasted for one semester.