Application Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory In Senior High School English Vocabulary Teaching

Vocabulary is vital to second language acquisition and vocabulary teaching constitutes an integral part of basic education.The amount and knowledge use of language directly influence the quality of the learner's comprehensive language application ability.Vocabulary teaching holds an important position in senior secondary education.Now some problems exist in the English vocabulary teaching of high schools.Aspects of pronunciation,literal meaning and word usage become fixed or fossilized in English vocabulary teaching.The middle school teachers attach importance to vocabulary teaching,but they often leave associative meaning and semantic dependency structure for each sense of poly-semantic word.In the traditional vocabulary teaching mode,some students just remember the new words by rote.This mechanical memory approach does not accelerate the students memorize,store and recollect the vocabulary.The less vocabulary inputting quantity and different word misuses affected the increase in students' vocabulary.To solve the above-mentioned problem,we need to introduce the conceptual metaphor theory into English vocabulary teaching of high schools.The conceptual metaphor theory lays stress on combining both cognitive and affective components with vocabulary remembering and understanding.This theory throws new light on English vocabulary teaching of senior high school.Accordingly,based on the conceptual metaphor theory,an applied study kept a watchful eye on vocabulary teaching in senior high school is put into force.Review the predecessors of advances and the two theoretical basis: Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Recognize Constructionalism Theory,the author takes the practical vocabulary teaching position into account and discusses the application of conceptual metaphor to English vocabulary teaching in senior high school whether the experiment was beneficial to their vocabulary proficiency.First,questionnaires and interview outline are scheduled.Second,in the light of pretest analysis,43 students in experimental class and 44 in control class are surveyed.Third,the experiment includes some basic words,fixed collocations and idioms in new senior English for China students book 1 and 2 of the PEP edition,applying conceptual metaphor theory in teaching vocabulary in experimental class and definition,classifications and mechanisms of conceptual metaphor are elaborated.Finally,questionnaires and interview are made additionally in the two groups,and then the data gathered before and after the experiment are analyzed to reach conclusions.Conclusions drawn from previous study are that application of conceptual metaphor theory plays a positive role in English vocabulary teaching and learning of high school.It can help students to discovery the internal laws of production of new words,word meaning variation and the internal connections among the polysemous words on the basis of human cognitive experiences.It also can facilitate students to sum up the significance of idiomatic and the cultural connotations embedded in idioms.In addition,it can promote students' vocabulary learning more easily than rote memory,thus remembering the connotation and denotation meaning of the new words.By using conceptual metaphor theory on vocabulary teaching can not only convert their traditional teaching ways but also provide a new perspective for trying new vocabulary teaching techniques for teachers.