The Facilitation Of The Conceptual Metaphors And Metonymies On The Acquisition Of English Idioms: An Empirical Study

The present study made a comparison of the effectiveness of the rote memorization and the motivated method of conceptual metaphors and metonymies among the Chinese English learners, two different language proficiencies were also taken into consideration to explore the acquisition under the two distinct conditions. 8 experiments were conducted in all in this study, 129 subjects were selected from the undergraduate English majors and postgraduate students in Ningbo University, and divided into experimental group and control group in each of the two levels. The software E-Prime 2.0 was applied to program and the data collected in the program were analyzed via SPSS 18.0. The major statistics approach used in the study were independent samples t-test(employed in experiment 1 and 3)and paired samples t-test(employed in experiment 2 and 4). Based on the quantitative and qualitative study, 4 experiments(each contain 2 groups: the control group and the experimental group) were conducted :For experiment 1: compared with the rote memorization method, conceptual metaphor and metonymy are effective strategy for the acquisition of the English idioms and the facilitating effect is significant. Such as the 36 th trial(t=-2.633, p=.012), the correction rates of the experimental group is higher than that of the control group: 97% > 73%, and the difference is significant for the p value is lower than.05.For experiment 2: motivated by the conceptual metaphor and metonymy, the experimental group kept a much more stable memorization than the control group, such as the 7th trial(CG: t=2.262, p=.031; EG: t=1.140, p=.264), while both groups have a decline in the correction rates, the change of the control group is apparently significant.For experiment 3: The learners of higher language proficiency tend to use the knowledge of metaphor and metonymy when they learn the English idioms. Such as the 18 th trial, in the group of lower language proficiency in experiment 1(t=1.000, p=.326), it has no significant difference between the control group and the experimental group, but in the group of higher language proficiency(t=-2.112, p=.043), this difference is significant and the control group falls far behind the experimental group.For experiment 4: the group of higher language proficiency which is motivated by the conceptual metaphor and metonymy kept a much stable memorization than the group of lower language proficiency. Such as the 19 th trial, in experiment 2 the experimental group from the group of lower language proficiency witnesses a decline in the correction rates(t=2.816, p=.009) while this kind of decline in the experimental group from the group of higher language proficiency is not significant(t=1.957, p=.058).