An Empirical Study Of College English Vocabulary Teaching From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Conceptual metaphor exists in people’s daily life, and it is the bridge between the concrete source domain and abstract target domain. In compliance with the principle of the invariance principle and the target domain overrides principle, in people’s thought, there is image schema which constructs the cross-domain mapping from the source domain to the target domain, thus people can understand target domain through source domain. The conceptual metaphor theory is usually applied in English vocabulary teaching, especially in polysemy, idioms and cultural implication, which contributes to vocabulary acquisition. In the college English vocabulary teaching, most students spend a lot of time acquiring vocabulary, but the outcome is disappointing. This thesis is an empirical study of college English vocabulary teaching from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory.There are three research questions:1) how does conceptual metaphor theory influence college English vocabulary teaching?2) how do the metaphorical awareness and metaphorical competence influence vocabulary acquisition?3) how may conceptual metaphor theory have effects on remembering words in long-term memory and the ability to acquire vocabulary?The subjects in this research are60non-English major sophomores. They are divided into experimental class and controlled class. Teacher teaches the two classes in experimental and traditional way respectively. Through one pretest and three posttests these findings are following: firstly,the two classes have no significance according to the analysis of pretest. The means of controlled class and experimental class are66.97and73.9, thus the outcome is that the application of conceptual metaphor theory to vocabulary teaching is more efficient than the traditional way. Secondly, through the analyses of posttest1and posttest2, the mean of controlled class is from66.97to72.07, while the mean of experimental class is from73.97to78.6. The fractional amplitudes are relatively low, however overall scores of experimental class is better than that of controlled class. It shows metaphorical awareness and metaphorical competence contribute to vocabulary acquisition. Thirdly, a week later, the mean of posttest3is from78.6in posttest2to80.53, which shows conceptual metaphor theory improves the long-term memory of words, thus consolidating the ability to acquire words. Based on the findings of this study, some implications on college English vocabulary teaching are proposed in the present study: firstly, the teacher had better apply the conceptual metaphor to vocabulary teaching and cultivate students’potential metaphorical awareness and metaphorical competence which will contribute to the learning of vocabularies, thus students can acquire vocabularies through the application of conceptual metaphor theory. Secondly, considering the cultural meaning of metaphor, teacher should pay attention to the cultural implications, thus instructing students to acquire vocabularies.