An Empirical Study On The Application Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory To The Teaching Of English Polysemous Words In Senior High Schools

This paper mainly studies the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to the teaching of English polysemous words(EPW)in senior high schools.In the face of a multitude of words and their extended meaning,English learners often remember mechanically,and seldom consciously associate various meanings of polysemy.Things like mechanical ways of memorizing diverse meanings of polysemy,low efficiency and difficulties in using them can discourage learners,and even deprive them of their interest and patience in learning English.At present,in polysemy teaching,teachers only ask learners to recite the meaning of each word or ask them to guess its meaning according to the context.However,rote memorization is a time-consuming and inefficient method.For quite some time,EPW teaching is also a big problem in high school English teaching.Faced with this situation,many domestic and foreign scholars are exploring an effective polysemous learning method.Unlike traditional formalist linguistics,Lakoff and Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory sees metaphor not just a rhetorical method,but a way of thinking or cognitive mechanism.The essence of metaphor is to use one thing to understand and experience another thing through similarity,which is the mapping from one concept field to another.Therefore,it is the main source of polysemy.That is,a word may have multiple senses,but only one sense is its basic meaning,and the other senses are all mapped or expanded from its basic sense.However,there are still few empirical studies based on this theory in our country.The development of this theory urgently needs empirical research.This thesis mainly studies the following issues based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory:1)What are the effects of the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to the teaching of EPW in senior high schools on students' interest and attitudes in learning EPW?2)What are the effects of the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to the teaching of EPW in senior high schools on students' long-term memorization of EPW?3)What are the effects of the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to the teaching of EPW in senior high schools on students' learning of new EPW?This empirical study selected students from two parallel classes of Grade Two of an ordinary senior high school in Hunan province as experimental subjects,and mainly used experimental methods such as pre-test,post-test,questionnaire,vocabulary test,etc.Reliability analysis,factor analysis,Independent Sample T test,Paired Sample T test were adopted to analyze the data collected from questionnaire as well as the results of the vocabulary test.The findings are as follows:1)EPW teaching under Conceptual Metaphor Theory helps students adopt a more positive attitude to learn EPW.2)EPW teaching under Conceptual Metaphor Theory can promote students' long-term memorization of EPW.3)EPW teaching under Conceptual Metaphor Theory improves senior high school students'ability of acquiring new EPW.This study provides an empirical basis for polysemous English teaching in senior high schools under the guidance of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and is therefore of certain theoretical and practical significance.However,due to various reasons,this study has some shortcomings in terms of research scale and scope.First of all,the research subjects were only 90 students.In the future study,the scale of the study can be expanded.Second,the number of polysemous words in this study is limited,and more polysemous words ought to be covered in future studies.