A Study On Application Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory In Teaching English Writing In Senior High School

Writing is an important part in English teaching and language training,as well as an important project of language learning evaluation.However,it is difficult because it requires learners to have not only sufficient grammatical knowledge,but also the competence to express ideas fluently and authentically.Currently in high schools,English teachers pay more attention to the explanation and analysis of vocabulary and grammar,not the cultivation of students’ writing performance.As a result,students are well aware of the correctness of words and grammar in the process of English writing but ignoring other elements such as cultural features in different languages.Therefore,their writings are far from readability in terms of novelty and interests.One of the key reasons is the abundant use of inappropriate metaphorical expressions which is mostly literal translation from Chinese and do not make sense in English.This study comprehensively uses a mixed research method of qualitative and quantitative analysis.From September 2019,90 Grade 10 students in a high school where the author is working are randomly divided into experimental class and control class for a one-semester teaching experiment.In the experimental class,CMT is applied to English writing teaching,while students in the control class are taught in the way without any instruction of conceptual metaphor.Through pretest,post-test and semi-structured interview with students,this thesis with the purpose of answering the following two specific questions: 1)How does teaching Emotion Metaphor help to improve students’ expression of emotion in their writing performances? 2)To what degree does Conceptual Metaphor Theory help to contribute in English writing class in senior high school? The following findings are obtained from the analysis of pretest and post-test data and interview: 1)Teaching of emotion metaphor in high school English writing class can promote the production of students’ emotion metaphor,and then help to improve students’ emotional expression in English writing.2)Conceptual Metaphor Theory can help students form metaphorical thinking by improving students’ metaphoric competence in comprehension,naturally produce metaphors.It also can reduce the influence of mother tongue thinking and non-native expressions in writing and enhance text coherence,improving students’ English writing performance.The research proves that applying conceptual metaphor theory to English writing teaching is effective and has certain practical significance.In order to apply the theory to teaching practice better,teachers should deepen their understanding ofconceptual metaphor and establish a new perspective on metaphoric cognition to guide their writing teaching more effective.Besides,teachers should consider students’ cognitive level when making teaching planning and design a reasonable one depends on it.what’s more,in the specific teaching classroom,teachers should let students develop good metaphor habits and guide students to explore metaphoric knowledge actively.