A Study Of The Effects Of Conceptual Metaphors On The English Idiom Acquisition Of Chinese EFL Learners

English idioms, which are traditionally accepted as multiword expressions with fixed structures and meanings, are common in daily language and considered as an essential and inseparable part of English vocabulary. However, learning English idioms has long been regarded as a thorny issue as they are figurative expressions that do not always mean what they literally state.Up till now, two major views on idioms are worth noting, which are the traditional views on idioms proposed by Fraser and the cognitive views on idioms put forward by Lakoff and Johnson.The present study is designed on the basis of the theories and researches of the latter. The overwhelming goal is to investigate whether gaining control over conceptual metaphors can enable Chinese EFL learners to deal successfully with English idioms. By testifying the effectiveness of conceptual metaphor approach, the researcher here attempts to provide a pathway of learning English idioms for Chinese EFL learners.The researcher rigorously designed an experiment with67participants involved. There are35learners in the experimental group, and32in the comparison group.The experiment was carried out during the normal English teaching course. After the pretests, the treatment began and lasted for four weeks. All the participants attended regularly scheduled English classes twice a week, and15minutes of each class were taken up for the instruction of the target idioms. With other intervening variables carefully controlled, the only difference between the two groups existed in the idiom teaching approach. An immediate posttest was administered to the participants after four weeks of comparative teaching——conceptual metaphor approach for the experimental group and traditional teaching approach for the comparison group. A delayed posttest was conducted one month later to examine learners’long-term retention of the target idioms.The data collected from the posttest papers are analyzed statistically and the results show that the learners in the experimental group outperform their counterparts in the comparison group both in the immediate meaning test and the delayed meaning test, which indicates that conceptual metaphors can enhance learners’comprehension of the target idioms.As for the forms of the target idioms, learners in the experimental group outscore their peers in the comparison group only in the immediate posttest, which suggests that conceptual metaphors can enhance learners’memory of idioms’forms in a short time.However, the facilitative effects disappear in the long run. Moreover, it is also found out that the learners have difficulty transferring their metaphorical awareness to the processing of other newly-met English idioms, which still need further investigations.Finally, based on the findings of the previous studies and the conclusion of the present study, some pedagogical implications and suggestions are elaborated, which can be of great help in classroom idiom instruction. In addition, due to the limitations of the study, further exploration in this respect is necessary.