A Study Of The Effects Of The Conceptual Metaphor On Junior High School English Polysemous Words Acquisition

Vocabulary is the basis of students’ English learning.However,the effect of vocabulary teaching,especially for polysemy,is always unsatisfactory.For a long time,teachers prefer to use monotonous and mechanical teaching methods,but the teaching effect is not ideal.Students are not able to accurately understand and memorize the multiple meanings of polysemy.Therefore,teachers should change traditional teaching methods into more innovative ones.Conceptual metaphor,as an essential theoretical basis for the extension of multiple meanings of polysemy has its advantages to the reform of polysemy teaching methods.This thesis combined quantitative and qualitative research methods to find the effects of conceptual metaphor on the junior high school English polysemy acquisition.The author conducted an experimental study on 97 students from two parallel classes of grade 7 in a public school from Shenzhen,Guangdong province.In the experiment,two classes were divided into two groups.The experimental group which consisted of 49 students adopted the teaching method under the guide of conceptual metaphor theory.While the controlled group which consisted of 48 students adopted the traditional vocabulary teaching method.The experiment included three vocabulary tests and two interviews.The pre-test ensured that the two classes were at the same vocabulary proficiency level and then a teaching procedure followed.Subsequently,the post-test was conducted to prove whether the teaching method guided by conceptual metaphor can effectively improve student’ comprehension and application of polysemy.A month later,a delayed test verified whether the teaching method guided by conceptual metaphor had positive effects on improving students’ long-term memory of polysemy.After the experiment,the data were collected to answer the research questions proposed before the experiment.After four months of teaching experiments,this study has identified that:1)the teaching method guided by conceptual metaphor could improve students’ learning efficiency of polysemous words;2)the experimental data showed that the score of the experimental group was significantly improved compared with that of the controlled group,which verified that the teaching method guided by conceptual metaphor was helpful to improve students’ comprehension and application of polysemous words;3)the scores of the experimental group in the delayed test after a month are also significantly improved compared with the scores of the post-test,which confirmed that the teaching method guided by conceptual metaphor was conducive to the long-term retention of students’ memory;4)the interview affirmed that students had a high degree of acceptance of this method,which helped them build up a metaphorical network in their mind,and their interest in learning had been dramatically improved,as well as their learning efficiency.Finally,this thesis hopes to provide some references for the application of conceptual metaphor theory to polysemy teaching of English learners who are at low grades,by combining the theoretical research and experimental research.