A Study On English Preposition Teaching In Senior High Schools Based On Image Schema Theory

English prepositions are an important part of English vocabulary. Although the number of prepositions is small and their variations are slight, they perplex most students in China. While teaching preposition, teachers with traditional preposition teaching method only ask students to recite translated versions. Most teachers write translated versions on the blackboard, but they don’t explain the relationship between the different senses of a preposition. This kind of traditional preposition teaching method only lead students to lose their interests in learning English, and then lower the degree of language proficiency.Many cognitive linguists abroad have already begun to study the preposition teaching with image schema and have already got extraordinary achievements. Some linguists in China have also begun to study the image schema teaching method, but failed to apply it widely in Chinese English class. Based on the theories of linguists’ studies abroad and home, this thesis attempts to answer these two questions:1. What are Senior High Schools students’ attitudes towards English preposition teaching?2. Dose English preposition teaching based on Image Schema Theory have a real effect on improving students’ preposition learning?The subjects involved in this thesis are the students from Class 1, Grade 3 and Class 2, Grade 3 of Yingkou Senior High School. Before the experiment, the author had designed a questionnaire to research the situation of prepositions’ teaching and learning. Class 1 as Experimental Class was taught by image schema, while Class 2 as Control Class was taught by traditional preposition teaching method. Before the experiment, there was a pretest to prove there were no differences in learning preposition between the two classes. During three months teaching, the Experimental Class and Control Class took a posttest at the same time, in order to compare the learning of effectiveness between these two classes. The results of the statistics will be analyzed by the software SPSS.According to the statistics, the score of the Experimental Class is obviously higher than that of the Control Class. That is to say, the image schema teaching method is more effective than the traditional preposition teaching method. This thesis not only continued previous researches but also outstanding achievements in this field.