An Empirical Study on Prepositions of Locality Up and Down in Senior High School Instruction Based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Abstract

Taking prepositions of locality up and down as examples, this study explores the effectiveness of the conceptual metaphor instruction for prepositions of locality in senior high school. The experimental class and the control class, which had similar mastery level of English prepositions of locality according to pre-test, were consistent in teaching materials, class hours, teachers and teaching schedule. But the experimental class was taught in the instruction of conceptual metaphor theory while the control class was taught by rote. After the experiment, the two classes were tested on the cognitive level of prepositions of locality and were retested one month later. The results demonstrated: (1) The questionnaire results showed that students’ semantic understanding of prepositions of locality up/down confined to spatial meaning while failed to master the abstract extended meaning. In addition, most of them hold a positive attitude towards the conceptual metaphor instruction for prepositions of locality but know little about it. (2) Pre-test and post-test data demonstrated that the mastery of prepositions of locality of the experimental class’ students (average score 90.7196), were far better than that of control class’s students (average score 76.4879) (P =0.0342<0.05). (3) In the re-test, students’ grades of the experimental class (decrease 2.7184) and those of the control class (decrease 15.8899) were further enlarged (p=0.0078<0.05), which showed the conceptual metaphor instruction for prepositions of locality can obviously promote students’ understanding and mastery the semantic extension of prepositions of locality as well as students’ long-term memory.