The Effects Of Conceptual Metaphor-guided Reading Teaching On Vocational School Students' Reading Performance

In traditional reading teaching,teachers often use grammatical translation to explain the vocabularies,sentences and discourses in the text.This teaching method puts students at a stage of mechanical memory of knowledge.They do not understand the connection between polysemy and have little knowledge of the cultural origin of proverbs or phrases.And the understanding of the reading text is only on the surface,and it has not been used flexibly after processing the text.So It is difficult for students to improve their reading performance.Conceptual metaphor is a way of thinking and serves as a cognitive tool of human beings.Its essence is to understand and experience one thing in terms of another.Conceptual metaphor can help students understand the working mechanism of polysemy,understand the deep meaning of sentences,and help students master the cohesion and coherence of a text.The ultimate goal is to enable students to use conceptual metaphorical thinking to master vocabulary and understand reading materials.Namely,to improve students' reading comprehension.Therefore,the present study explores the effect of Conceptual Metaphor Theory on English reading performance for vocational school students.The specific research questions are as follows:1)What's the effect of conceptual metaphor-guided reading teaching on vocational school students' English reading performance in vocabulary comprehension?2)What's the effect of conceptual metaphor-guided reading teaching on vocational school students' English reading performance in sentence comprehension?3)What's the effect 'of conceptual metaphor-guided reading teaching on vocational school students' English reading performance in discourse comprehension?In this study,the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory in English reading teaching in vocational schools is empirically studied by the combination of quantitative and qualitative studies.A three-month controlled experiment was conducted with 60 students from two accounting major classes in a vocational school in Huai'an City.One of the classes is the experimental class,which integrates conceptual metaphor into English reading teaching,infiltrates conceptual metaphorical thinking from three levels of reading comprehension:vocabulary,sentence and text,and trains students' ability to solve problems by applying conceptual metaphorical thinking and in which the teacher help students learn the necessary vocabulary,improve their reading methods and so on.The other class adopted the traditional English teaching mode.Through the statistical analysis of the test before and after the experiment,classroom observation and interview results,the following three conclusions are drawn:1)Regarding the reading performance in terms of vocabulary understanding,the EC(M=7.27)does much better than the CC(M=6.27),and there is a significant difference between the two classes(p=0.046).Therefore,the reading teaching guided by conceptual metaphor does improve the reading performance of vocational school students in vocabulary comprehension.Through the qualitative study of interview and classroom observation,it is further concluded that conceptual metaphor can help students to guess the meaning of a word,grasp the relationship between polysemy and the cultural background behind the idiom.2)Regarding the reading performance in sentence comprehension,the EC(M=7.00)outperforms the CC(5.60),and there exists a significant difference between the two classes(p=0.004).Therefore,the reading teaching guided by conceptual metaphor does improve the reading performance of vocational school students in sentence comprehension.Through interviews and classroom research,it is concluded that conceptual metaphor can enhance students'understanding of sentence structure and metaphorical expressions,thus deepening their understanding of the deep meaning of sentences.3)Regarding the reading performance in discourse comprehension,the EC(M=6.73)outperforms the CC(5.20),and there exists a significant difference between the two classes(p=0.021).Therefore,the reading teaching guided by conceptual metaphor does improve the reading performance of vocational school students in discourse comprehension.Combined with classroom observation and interviews,it is further concluded that conceptual metaphor can enhance the students' analysis of cohesion and coherence of the text,their understanding of the text and the author's emotional tendency as well.Meanwhile,in terms of the overall level of reading performance,the performance of the EC(M=76.443)is better than the CC(69.440),and there is a significant difference between the two classes(p=0.027).Therefore,the reading teaching guided by conceptual metaphor improves the overall reading performance of vocational school students.Finally,there are still some limitations in this study.For example,the research sample is not large enough,the experimental time is limited,and the teachers' manipulation of Conceptual Metaphor Theory is far from satisfaction.Therefore,this study needs to be further improved.