An Empirical Study Of Vocational School English Vocabulary Teaching Based On The Conceptual Metapnor Theory

As we know, vocabulary is the carrier of human’s thoughts. Vocabulary teachinghad not become a hot research topic in the field of applied linguistics until1970. Buteven in the field of vocabulary study, the researchers and scholars did not paysufficient attention to the cognitive factors of vocabulary, let alone to apply themetaphor theories in the researches of vocabulary teaching. Therefore, the researcheson the vocabulary teaching became a new explored perspective for the Englishteaching in the vocational schools.Researches on metaphor had a very long history. In the traditional study ofmetaphor, metaphor was viewed as a kind of rhetorical means. The conceptualmetaphor theory raised by Lakoff&Johnson（1980）considered metaphor as aubiquitous phenomenon in the language and a kind of cognitive tool in its essence,which rooted in human’s conceptual systems, perceived the world and formed theconcepts through human’s thoughts and actions. The conceptual metaphor is asystematic mapping process, that is to say, the mapping interacts between the sourcedomain and target domain to explain the cognitive phenomenon of the metaphor. Itwas defined that human used a kind of specific things to comprehend and experienceanother kind of abstract things. In order to improve English vocabulary teaching, theauthor tried to verify English vocabulary teaching in the vocational schools based onthe conceptual metaphor theory could get the significantly teaching effect.In this research, the author of the thesis did an experiment, in which two naturalclasses in grade2011from Dongguan information technology school, who majored inCNC (Computer Numerical Control) with the equivalent English proficiency, werechosen as the subjects. The author set Class One as the experimental class (EC) andClass Two as the control class (CC). There were40students in each class, with a totalnumber of80. CC was taught in the form of traditional vocabulary teaching methodonly with mechanical explanations of the pronunciations, the forms and the meaningsof the words, while EC was input with the knowledge of the metaphor and was taughtEnglish vocabulary under the conceptual metaphor. The experiment procedures weredivided into three stages. The first stage was in the first week. The second stage wasfrom the second week to the twelfth week. The third stage was after the twelfth week. The experimental statistical indicators are the variation of the English vocabulary testresults and the interest in learning English. Firstly, the author applied the softwareSPSS17.0to make the statistics and analysis by t-test, which was about the Englishvocabulary test results and the experiment results obtained by the subjects both in thepre-test and the post-test. Secondly, the author adopted a questionnaire, which was tomake a survey on the subjects to know their English learning interest changed beforeand after the experiment.The author used t-test to make the statistics and analysis about the Englishvocabulary results in the post-test of the experiment, which proved the Englishvocabulary results in the post-test of the experiment were higher than those in thepre-test of the experiment. They were in the significant difference. Meanwhile, thefindings of the questionnaire indicated that the number of subjects who wereinterested in learning English and their rate in the post-test of the experiment in theexperimental class had greater change and have been more improved than those in thepre-test of the experiment. It was through the empirical research that the author madethe research conclusions as follows.1. English vocabulary teaching based on the conceptual metaphor theory canbetter improve students’ understanding of English words in the vocational schools.2. English vocabulary teaching based on the conceptual metaphor theory canbetter raise students’ interest in learning English in the vocational schools.