An Empirical Study Of Conceptual Metaphor-based Oral English Teaching In College

Metaphors were regarded as a rhetorical device in the literary domain traditionally.Linguists began to do research about metaphors from the cognitive perspective in1970s.Linguists Lackoff and Johnson hold that metaphors are pervasive in everyday life, notonly in the language, but in thought and action. They consider that metaphors are vitalcognitive tools that structure the way we formulate and understand abstract concepts.Oral English proficiency of the college English majored students is a crucial part inthe college English curriculum. However, many students’ oral English expression isfaced with the problem of lack of fluency, accuracy and not being genuine. How toefficiently improve students’ oral communicating ability and teach them to express ideasmore accurately and genuinely is vital in college oral English teaching curriculum.This study intends to explore the pedagogical implication of the conceptualmetaphors by applying conceptual metaphor theory into the oral English teaching. Theempirical research is based on40sophomore English majored college students from twoclasses. One is in the control group; the other is in the experimental group. Before theempirical teaching their oral English proficiencies were almost at the same level, bothequally incompetent. During the following13weeks’ teaching, the experimental groupare taught by the conceptual-metaphor method, while the control group are taught by thetraditional oral English teaching method. According to data analysis by SPSS software,the experimental group’s oral English expression in the aspect of vocabulary resource,content and grammatical accuracy have improved more dramatically than those of thecontrol class students. In addition, students develop more interest in the participationand learning of the oral English procedure.