A Study On The Application Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory In Reading Teaching For The English Majors

Based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory(CMT) put forward by Lackoff and Johnson, that a metaphor is a basic way of thinking about a given concept, this research aims to confirm the effect of CMT on reading teaching for English majors. According to Lackoff and Johnson, CMT and its corresponding metaphoric expressions permeate the English language; meanwhile, English reading comprehension is not just decoding of the literal meanings of words, but a kind of interaction among words, discourse logical development and cultures. In this process, CMT is one of the bridges to such interaction.For the above mentioned reason, after stating briefly the CMT theory, the theory of reading teaching, the related current studies at home and abroad, the researcher firstly explores the application of CMT to reading teaching for English majors in three aspects: lexical metaphoric meaning, metaphoric cohesion and coherence in discourse, and metaphoric cultures. Then, she introduces the experimental study. The researcher randomly selects as subjects business classes of English Majors of Grade 2014 in a university in Anhui Province, namely, class 1 as the experimental group and class 2 as the controlled group. Before the experiment, a pre-test and a questionnaire are conducted and processed among the two groups through qualitative and quantitative analysis, with the statistic software SPSS21 and Excel so that the researcher can be well informed about the students’ cognition toward reading and the CMT. And the experiment is not to be carried out until their similarity of the students’ reading comprehension ability and cognition of the CMT are ensured. When the experiment starts, only regular teaching is provided to the controlled group. But in the experimental group, the researcher adds the CMT to the regular teaching by presenting the metaphor knowledge and analyzing metaphors in the textbook to help students better comprehend the meaning of metaphoric words and the textual cohesion and coherence, and deepen the learning of different cultures. At the end of the study, after testing both groups twice and collecting their grades, including the grades of the immediate test and delayed one, the researcher analyzes the effective data with SPSS21, finding a remarkable difference between the experimental group and controlled one in reading grades, which are nearly at the same level before the experiment. At last, she draws the following conclusions:(1)It is a great probability that the CMT can be applied to reading teaching for sophomores majoring English. It can help them learn English vocabulary in a more systematical and integral way, handle the textual cohesion and coherence more efficiently as well as reduce their cognitive misunderstanding resulted from cultural differences in reading process.(2) The students’ knowledge of the CMT can obviously improve their understanding of the vocabulary, discourse and culture and thus enhance their reading comprehension ability.(3) There is a big potential in the sophomores ’ reading comprehension ability which requires English teachers to apply such linguistic theory as the CMT to reading teaching so as to improve the efficiency of reading teaching.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction including the general research background, objectives, methods and the outline of the thesis. The second one is the literature review explaining briefly the CMT, image schema, theories on English reading teaching, the correlation between the CMT and reading teaching, as well as the previous and current related studies at home and abroad. The third one is about the application of CMT to English reading teaching, illustrating the positive effects of CMT on the lexical teaching, discourse teaching and cultural teaching. The fourth one describes the empirical study, elaborating research hypothesis, subjects, instruments, procedures, questionnaires, results and discussion of language tests,the enlightenment brought by this research. The last chapter is the conclusion summarizing the paper as well as pointing out its deficiency.