Application Of Conceptual Metaphor In English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

We are surrounded by languages. Whether in a living or written language, metaphor, as a basis of rhetoric device, is reflected in our daily life, and flourishes and is more and more used with the development of language. It is with the development and growth of linguistics that metaphor has become more absorbed. At the same time, as one of the three elements of English learning, vocabulary is also a key link in language learning. And to understand the meaning of a word is greatly related with the consideration of the learner’s cognitive factors in vocabulary teaching, but this has not received sufficient attention in actual vocabulary teaching; moreover, the theory of cognitive metaphor has seldom been used in guiding the research of vocabulary teaching. In recent years, metaphor theory research has been given much attention in foreign countries, many linguists have found an essential strong link between words and metaphor in language use, and some linguists try to apply the conceptual metaphor theory to vocabulary teaching in other languages. In China, the study of metaphor has also brought up a new rise of English language learning and research, a lot of teachers and researchers have applied conceptual metaphor in the practice of university English vocabulary teaching, and achieved very good result. In this thesis, the author, based on his own teaching experience, finds that in the senior high school English books of new educational reform, conceptual metaphor vocabulary and conceptual metaphor expression is ubiquitous, but in the present domestic senior high school English teaching practice, little attention has been given to the research of the relationship between the conceptual metaphor theory and senior high school English vocabulary teaching. Therefore, the author proposes a hypothesis:to apply the conceptual metaphor theory to English vocabulary teaching in senior high school will improve the efficiency of learning vocabulary. The author finds that metaphor in senior high school textbooks can be found everywhere, so this problem is worthy of in-depth study. To study vocabulary teaching in senior high school on the basis of the conceptual metaphor theory is of great value. First of all, the author concisely introduces the development and research achievement of metaphor and conceptual metaphor theory in the current stage at home and abroad, and this is to prove the necessity and feasibility of applying conceptual metaphors in English vocabulary teaching in senior high school. Secondly, in order to prove that to introduce the conceptual metaphor theory in English vocabulary teaching in senior high school will improve the efficiency of learning vocabulary, the author conducts an effective test for four months by means of questionnaire and experiment.Through the effective test, the main research question in this paper is:1, whether to apply the conceptual metaphor theory in English Vocabulary Teaching in senior high school is feasible or not;2, whether English Vocabulary Teaching in senior high school with the guidance of conceptual metaphor theory will rapidly improve the students’vocabulary learning ability or not. Based on this, the author conducts questionnaire survey in Zhengzhou Guohua High School to understand whether the students are satisfied with their present English vocabulary teaching methods. And then, he tests the students’rhetoric ability by means of the pre-test1. He also tests whether the86students from different experiment teams have the same level of English vocabulary by means of the pre-test2. Finally, he tests whether the new method has the efficiency in vocabulary teaching by means of post-test. Based on the results of pre-test and post-test, he draws the conclusion that the theory of conceptual metaphor can play a positive role in vocabulary teaching, but there are also some shortcomings, and this will produce profound influence on the later English teaching. Research done in this middle school experiment also has some limitations, mainly in the limited sampling survey. The second is the limitation of the English language itself, because not all the English words can be teaching through metaphor way. For teachers, the conceptual metaphor directly applied to the actual teaching of high school also deserves further discussion. Finally, this paper also puts forward some suggestions on the study, the first to do as much as possible is to increase the test object to ensure the reliability of test data. Secondly, we ignore the influence of the cultural background of English-speaking countries to vocabulary teaching, study the English national culture into vocabulary teaching, and to explore the influence of culture on English Vocabulary Teaching in senior high school.