Research On The Influence Of Journey Metaphor On Academic Engagement Of College Freshmen

With the developing of science and technology, the influence of higher education is more and more important. Universities as an important stage of higher education play a special role on helping students adapting to the college life as soon as possible. The educators should focus on improving students’ self-activity for helping them smooth and efficient through the college life. Meanwhile, the entrance education of freshmen is the starting point of the whole higher education. At this moment the new acquired attitudes and habits may have a potential impact on the students’ future growth. The target of educators should take effective actions on making the freshmen having a good start. Specifically, a good start shows an overall impact on integrate into university life and establish the correct viewpoints of life. As we all know, metaphors exist in all parts of our daily life and affect our lives in different ways. Journey metaphor already proved as one of the highest frequency metaphor is always used to encourage students work hard. The study focuses on using journey metaphors to make the education demonstrating better results.This study is mainly based on conceptual metaphor theory, using single factor experiment design as method of study. The aim of this study is exploring how journey metaphors effect and improve the academic engagement of college freshmen from the aspects of the operation methods. The purpose of the first experiment is to verify the influence of the journey metaphor on the academic engagement. Through three kinds of contrast conditions: the journey metaphor, the neutral metaphor and the non-metaphor,this experiment proves that the journey metaphor has a positive impact on academic engagement of college freshmen. The purpose of experiment two is to explore the influence of the secondary journey metaphor on the different latitudes of the academic engagement. The second experiment selects four kinds of experimental conditions——active, passive, obstacle metaphors and control group for comparison, discussing their different consequences in the academic level of target, contact, emotion and behavior tendency. The experiment shows that emphasizing active of journey metaphor has the greatest impact on the academic engagement of college freshmen, and in the meantime makes a significant effect on all levels of academic engagement of college freshmen.The behavior tendency of the academic engagement of college freshmen shows biggestchange in the four academic level.