The Application Of Conceptual Metonymy In College English Reading Teaching

Reading plays an important part not only in getting the information, but also in secondlanguage learning and international communication and cooperation. The level of Englishreading is an important manifestation to measure the integrative level of the English learner.So improving the reading ability is a key to improve the abilities of listening, speaking,writing and translation. However, in traditional English reading teaching, teachers onlyconcern about the explanation of grammar and the analysis of the sentence structures, neglectthe master of the central idea of the article, lack of digging the expressions containing thebackground knowledge of the national cultural characteristics and emotional intention of theauthor, thus make students only understand the literal meaning simply, and finally lead to theinefficient reading. As for such current situation of college English teaching, on the base ofconceptual metonymy, the thesis aims to study the applied effect in college English reading bythe means of elaborating this theory and conducting experiments.Reading is not only an interaction between reader and author, but also a complex,dynamic process of cognitive psychology. While conceptual metonymy, as a general cognitivemechanism, plays an important role in the human conceptual system, thinking and inference.Therefore, conceptual metonymy provides a strong theoretical foundation to the readingprediction and decoding process. This study involves120sophomore of non-English majorfrom Boda College of JiLin Normal University. The teaching experiment lasts18weeks inthose two parallel classes. One of class containing60students as an experimental group isintroduced the conceptual metonymy to guide the reading teaching, while the other class as ancontrol group is still used traditional methods to guide reading teaching. Before theexperiment, all the subjects do a questionnaire and attend the reading test, and after theexperiment, they all take another reading test and interview. The experimental data isanalyzed by the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS, version13.0).The results of the study show: conceptual metonymy is benefit to understand and masterthe basic cognitive mechanisms of vocabulary evolution, thus promote the identity andefficient application of the words. Then, conceptual metonymy is in favor of activating or supplying relevant information, thus promoting to understand the cohesion and coherence ofthe text and master the writing purpose and emotional intention of the author. Finally,conceptual metonymy is helpful to understand the culture reflected in the language, thuspromote to understand the different national customs and master the connotation of culture intext. Under the guidance of the conceptual metonymy, college English reading teachingincreases the reading interests of students, improve the reading comprehension ability ofstudents, expand their reading strategies, and cultivate them to form good reading habits.