Applied Research Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory To The Teaching Of English Phrasal Verbs In Senior High School

English phrasal verbs are one of the most challenging aspects of English language learning in Chinese senior high schools due to the diverse meanings,complex structure and high productivity.Traditional instruction and teaching of phrasal verbs usually enumerate the meanings of phrasal verbs without in-depth interpretation,thus Chinese students fail to master them.This leads to frequent misuse,and even avoidance of phrasal verbs.As different from syntactic and semantic studies of phrasal verbs,this study puts emphasis on the conceptual metaphor theory perspective of phrasal verbs teaching and learnings.Many researchers explored the potential effects of cognitive approach on phrasal verbs teaching and they achieved a lot of encouraging results.However,few of the empirical studies paid attention to the acquisition of English phrasal verbs in Chinese senior high school.According to the conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson,the teaching experiment is carried out in order to investigate the effects of conceptual metaphor theory on the acquisition of English phrasal verbs for Chinese senior high school.The study tries to explore this from two different aspects,namely,comprehension and production.Therefore,three different research questions are put forth:(1)Does the conceptual metaphor theory-based instruction facilitate the comprehension of English phrasal verbs for Chinese high school students?(2)Does the conceptual metaphor theory-based instruction facilitate the production of English phrasal verbs for Chinese high school students?(3)Does the conceptual metaphor theory have effects on senior high school students' interests in the learning of English phrasal verbs?Sixty-seven participants in the study are from two parallel classes of senior Grade One students in a high school,Shanghai.Participants in the two classes will be instructed by the same teacher but under two different phrasal verb teaching methods.That is to say,traditional instruction will be carried out in the controlled group(N=35),whereas conceptual metaphor instruction-based instruction will be used in the experiment group(N=32).Several instruments,including tests of phrasal verbs,questionnaire,and interview,are employed in the teaching experiment.Major findings of the study are listed out through statistical analysis and discussion of the collected data,i.e.conceptual metaphor theory-based instruction can better facilitate the comprehension and production of English phrasal verbs,and stimulate the interest for Chinese senior high school students.Three pedagogical implications can be derived in the study,1)developing students' metaphorical awareness is crucial in the conceptual metaphor theory-based instruction,2)the conceptual metaphor theory-based instruction in the senior high school classroom can be used as a complementary method to traditional instruction,3)it is significant for teachers to attach importance to student-centered learning in the teaching process.