A Case Study Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory And English Vocabulary Teaching In Junior High School

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that the cognitive theory of metaphorcould be applied to English vocabulary teaching in junior high schools. In order topromote junior high school students’ understanding, memorizing and application ofEnglish vocabulary, and the awareness of metaphor can be raised among junior highschool students and teachers in the process of English vocabulary teaching.Vocabulary teaching, which used to be ignored by language instructors, is animportant aspect in English instruction. However, traditional methodologies fails tosolve the fundamental problem: the comprehension of word meanings. Besides,during vocabulary teaching, the English instructors don’t pay enough attentions to thecognitive factors. Metaphor is a tool as well as one of the important ways of humancognition, but it is seldom used to the English vocabulary teaching in junior highschool. So it will be very meaningful to research the role of conceptual metaphor inEnglish vocabulary teaching and learning. This thesis reveals the significant role ofconceptual metaphor in vocabulary teaching and demonstrates that in junior highschool the cognitive theory of metaphor can be applied to English vocabularyteaching, and promote students’ understanding, memorizing and application of theEnglish vocabulary."The metaphor is one of the specific ways of human cognition and thinkingpatterns”. From this perspective, this thesis first expounds that vocabulary teachinghas always been the key and difficult points in English teaching, then the authorproposes that put the theory of conceptual metaphor into the English vocabularyteaching in high schools. Then the author reviews the studies on English vocabularyteaching at home and abroad, focusing on their importance, major defects and givingthe systematic overview and comments on the teaching situation. Followed are thetheoretical basis of this thesis: the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the image schemaand the associative chain. By the analysis of the definition, nature and classification ofconceptual metaphor of Lakoff to explore how to use it to learn English polysemy,and how to understand the relationship between some cultural connotation words, aswell as how to have a better understanding of the correlation of different meanings.The thesis also designed an empirical study to test the actual effect of conceptualmetaphor theory in English vocabulary teaching. The results verified that theassumptions are made before the experiment: conceptual metaphor can promote theunderstanding, memorizing and application of junior high school students’ English vocabulary and some cultural connotation words. It also manifests that students’competence in understanding and application of words after being instructed undermetaphorical approach has been noticeably improved. At last, the author shows someshortcomings which are still in this paper and endeavors to raise some expectations.