The Comparative Study Of Metaphors In Chinese,American And British High School Biology Textbooks

The new curriculum standards require that the design of textbooks should be studentoriented and the compilation of textbooks should conform to the cognitive characteristics of students.The cognitive style of students is largely metaphorical.Metaphor refers to the cognitive activity of understanding and representing another conceptual system(target domain)through a familiar conceptual system(source domain).In the early stage,metaphor was only studied as a kind of textual rhetoric in linguistics.With the development of cognitive psychology,metaphor has gradually become a cognitive activity at the cognitive level of thinking.In the process of continuous development,the use of metaphor also becomes flexible,and shows the characteristics of vividness,diversity,life and humanoid.In teaching,metaphor can connect scientific concepts with things in daily life,human or natural phenomena,and help students understand and construct new conceptual systems based on existing knowledge.This paper sorted out the research system of metaphor theory through literature analysis,built a framework of metaphor analysis in high school biology textbooks,and conducted a comparative study of metaphor in Chinese,American and British textbooks through content analysis and comparative research methods.This paper begins with the literature of comparisons and metaphor in high school biology textbooks.This paper combs the theoretical research system of metaphor,determines the concept and theoretical basis of metaphor,and constructs the framework of metaphor analysis in high school biology textbooks.Then,based on the framework of metaphor analysis,a comparative analysis of metaphors under three important themes in Chinese,American and British textbooks is conducted.The conclusions conclude that:(1)The four-dimension metaphor analysis model can present the similarities and differences between different themes and different textbooks.(2)The use of metaphor in high school biology textbooks accords with embodied cognition of students.Based on the research findings,the following suggestions are put forward for the textbook writers: the use of metaphor in teaching materials should pay attention to the connection between new concepts and pre-subject concepts.Based on sutdents’ misconceptions,the textbook should indicate the misunderstanding between two concepts.The textbook should appropriately increase the metaphor practice,so as to facilitate the detection of misconceptions in students’ cognition.For senior high school biology teachers,this study puts forward the following suggestions: pay attention to the different use of metaphors,analyze and interpret metaphors in textbooks.Creative use of metaphors with students.Try to use metaphor to test students’ learning outcomes.Metaphor research in high school biology textbooks is helpful to comprehensively deepen the development of textbooks focusing on the construction of core concepts of biology in curriculum reform,and it also can stimulate students’ interest in learning,build a bridge of understanding and communication,and help students understand and construct core concepts.It is hoped that the results of this study can provide useful reference and enlightenment for textbook writers on the use of metaphor in textbooks and metaphor teaching for front-line biology teachers.