A Study Of The Application Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory To EFL Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

Vocabulary learning determines language learners’abilities in listening, speaking, reading and writing to some extent, and meanwhile it is a serious obstacle for language teachers and students. Traditional way of teaching vocabulary is more about comparison and translation, and translation misleads the students that English words and Chinese words are in one-to-one relationship. Some teachers and scholars have worked out different vocabulary teaching strategies, which can not give help to students on comprehending the exact meanings of the vocabularies. So students prefer to cram vocabulary in senior high school. On the other hand, New English Curriculum Standard requires high school students to have a capacity of2400-2500words and300-400idioms and phrases at least. This shows the very importance of vocabulary.Strategies determine the results of vocabulary learning to a large extent. With the publication of Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson in1980, more and more scholars attach importance to the effects of metaphor. In recent years, many scholars have proved that metaphor is helpful for language teaching, especially vocabulary teaching, after lots of theoretical analyses and experimental researches. Metaphor is not only a figure of speech, but also an important cognitive style. The using of metaphorical language corresponds to the rule of memorization. Our cognition develops from basic to complex, from known to unknown, and from concrete to abstract. Expended meanings of words are developed from the basic ones.Present research attempts to apply conceptual metaphor theory to EFL vocabulary teaching in senior high school so as to explore a new vocabulary teaching model. By increasing the awareness of metaphor, students will get improvement in learning of polysemes, collocations and idioms and using the words more appropriately and flexibly.Present thesis attempts to answer the following questions:(1) Whether the application of conceptual metaphor theory can increase the students’retention of vocabulary.(2) Whether students in senior high school will understand the meanings of polysemy and idioms more precisely on the basis of conceptual metaphor theory and can flexibly use the words on their understanding of the meanings.By employing questionnaires and tests, these issues are analized and answered with the help of SPSS. The findings of the research are:(1) Conceptual metaphor theory can help the students remember and understand the meanings of vocabulary more precisely, especially polysemes and idioms.(2) The application of conceptual metaphor improves the flexibility of using words.The author gave some implications on English teaching for the language teachers on the basis of results analysis and major findings of present research, hoping bring positive functions to English teaching. At last, she pointed out some limitations of present study and suggestions for the further study.