An Empirical Study Of The Impact Of Metaphorical Awareness Instruction On Senior High School Students’ English Reading Proficiency

Where there is no reading，there will be little language learning (Bright and McQregor,1970). It shows reading is an important information input in English languagelearning, According to the requirement of National English Curriculum Standard(2003), reading proficiency plays a crucial role in English foreign learners’(EFL)learning. However, the teaching and learning of reading have not been so satisfyingfor a long time. The phenomenon of high input and low output remains widespread inEnglish reading teaching in China. So a solution which is to blaze new methods toEnglish reading teaching under some theoretical bases is necessary. In the view ofLakoff and Johnson，metaphors are everywhere in our daily lives，not only inlanguage, but also in thought and behavior．Metaphor is cognitive in nature, not arhetorical metaphor, not a product of simple language, it reflects the way of thinkingthrough language (Lakoff and Johnson,1980:4). Understanding of English readingsuccessfully depends largely on metaphor comprehension, reading comprehension isclosely related to the construction of the concept of metaphor. In recent years, manylinguists have found the close connection between metaphor and language and someof them have tried to apply conceptual metaphor to reading teaching in colleges athome and abroad but rarely in senior high schools. Therefore, the thesis is focused onthe impact of metaphorical awareness instruction on senior high school students’reading proficiency based on an empirical study.The thesis firstly discussed literature review on researches on reading theory andapplication of conceptual metaphor in reading teaching in China. After reviewing theliterature, the author delineated theoretical basis for the research. Then designed ateaching experiment of metaphorical awareness instruction, a metaphorical awarenessand reading proficiency test, two reading comprehension tests and an interview. Theaims of the research are to investigate the correlation between metaphorical awarenessand reading proficiency and if metaphorical awareness instruction can promote seniorhigh school students’ reading proficiency. The subjects of this study were70students in senior two from two parallel classes in Huilai No.2Middle School, one class wassupposed to be experimental group (EG), the other was control group (CG), andmetaphorical awareness instruction experiment time lasted almost four months. Datacollection was conducted by two experienced teachers and data analyses were carriedout by EXCEL and SPSS (Version8.0).Analyses of the data showed the following results:1) After the teaching experiment, students’ reading proficiency is correlated with theirmetaphorical awareness significantly, indicating the higher their metaphoricalawareness is，the better their English reading proficiency will be.2) Before the teaching experiment, two groups’ reading proficiency were close. Afterthe experiment, there was a significant difference in reading proficiency between EGand CG, the levels of reading proficiency in EG are higher than those in CG. It isverified that metaphorical awareness instruction can promote senior high students’English reading proficiency. Learners can improve their reading proficiency fromthree aspects, which are vocabulary knowledge, text coherence and culturalawareness.The findings in this study had significant pedagogical implications for Englishteaching. It told us the new teaching method not only can apply to college, but alsocan promote senior high students’ English reading proficiency. Therefore, theconceptual metaphor knowledge is not only helpful to language teachers and learners,but also beneficial to the standard of curriculum designers. Finally, the authorproposed some limitations of the present research and left open the question as towhether this conceptual metaphor-based method can also be applied in other coursessuch as speaking, writing teaching in senior high school.