A Study On The Application Of Metaphor Identification Procedure To Senior High School English Vocabulary Teaching

Vocabulary, a basic element of language is universally regarded as a crucial part of language teaching. Traditionally, the majority of Chinese English teachers merely make students learn words by rote, such as remembering pronunciation, form and meaning of the words without paying attention to the relationship between words' meanings. As a result, students spend a large amount of time learning vocabulary, but they fail in using them properly. Many researchers and scholars manage to apply Conceptual Metaphor Theory(CMT) to English vocabulary teaching from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. It is known that conceptual metaphor is a way of thinking rather than a rhetorical device. Therefore, it is beneficial for students to learn vocabulary based on CMT. From the above, it can be seen that identifying metaphor is of great importance. However, most scholars and researchers identify metaphor with their intuition; meanwhile they know little about metaphor identification. On the contrary, the development of metaphor identification comes to mature in the West. MIP presented by Pragglejaz Group has become popular in the international academic circle because of its high reputation on validity and reliability. This thesis makes an attempt to combine MIP with English vocabulary teaching in senior high school, adopting quantitative analysis. It aims to facilitate students' practical use toward metaphorical meaning of the words by adopting MIP. Two research questions are supposed to be solved:1.Can the application of MIP help senior high school students acquire metaphorical meaning of words?2.Can the application of MIP facilitate students' receptive learning andproductive learning in vocabulary teaching?Participants in the study are randomly chosen from Grade Two,a senior high school in Guangzhou City. The study lasts twelve weeks. Students are taught by the same teacher but using different teaching methods. In the Experimental Group(EG), the words are learnt by means of MIP, while in the Control Group(CG), they are taught by the traditional Grammar-Translation Method, focusing on introducing pronunciation, form and meaning. The study consists of two pre-tests and one post-test in total. Pre-test?is to ensure no significant difference between EG and CG in English proficiency, especially the metaphorical meaning of the words; pre-test? is to ensure there is no significant difference in their vocabulary level. Post-test is conducted by using SPSS 20.0 after the whole study. The results have shown that from the post-test that MIP can help student acquire metaphorical meaning of words. Meanwhile, it makes a difference for facilitating students' productive learning in vocabulary teaching. Finally, the major findings shed light on some implications on second language vocabulary acquisition as well as other aspects in foreign language teaching.In conclusion, MIP is not only beneficial for second language vocabulary acquisition, but making a difference in other aspects of second language teaching.