The Applied Research of IdeationalGrammatical Metaphor in College English Reading

[摘 要]It is commonly thought that ideational grammatical metaphor is only a completely linguistic phenomenon.This thesis makes explorative studies on teaching college English reading by drawing heavily on the theory of ideational grammatical metaphor，and tries to find out whether teaching reading from the perspective of ideational grammatical metaphor is beneficial to improving their reading ability.The introduction of ideational metaphor to college English reading teaching injects some new life to the current college English reading teaching.

[關鍵詞]ideational grammatical metaphor college English reading experiment SPSS

[中圖分類號]G64 [文獻標識碼]A [文章編號]1009-5489(2009)12-0045-02

Ⅰ.Aims of the present study

As an essential part of language teaching and learning，reading's necessity and importance are generally admitted.And to develop the learners' reading comprehension ability is a basic content in the college English teaching.However，the college English reading teaching is facing with a difficult situation，and the teaching result cannot satisfy the present situation.Because of the features of college English reading，reading often acts as an obstacle for many non-English majors.The college English reading teaching has gone through several periods，such as the bottom-up reading model，the top-down reading model，and interactive reading model.They all occupied the English teaching in China for a long period of time and even are practiced now.However，all the above three teaching models have their own deficiencies，and they cannot meet the current requests of the newly published College English Syllabus completely.

Under such a situation，this paper aims to probe a new teaching model in college English reading teaching，the ideational grammatical metaphor model.

Ⅱ.Theoretical basis

The concept of grammatical metaphor was introduced in Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar，in a separate chapter on this subject:\"Beyond the clause:Metaphorical modes of expression\".Halliday places his introduction of the term grammatical metaphor in a more general framework outlining traditionally recognized types of\"rhetorical transference\"or\"figures of speech\":metaphor，metonymy and synecdoche.Focusing on metaphor，he expands the traditional definition in a number of steps，thus making room for a newly-identified type，grammatical metaphor.

He classifies grammatical metaphors into ideational and interpersonal grammatical metaphors.With the development of researches，he divides grammatical metaphors into 13 sorts.

Two categories of ideational grammatical metaphor --the experiential metaphor and the logical metaphor -- are dealt with.The realization of experiential metaphor involves the system of Transitivity that consists of participant，process and environmental elements.The logico-semantic relation is categorized into two types，the external relation and the internal relation.Logical metaphor is mainly concerned with the realization of the external relations.The combination of the two often leads to increase of lexical density，decreasing of form words and condensing of grammatical structures.Thus it usually produces a high level of abstraction in text that is necessary in some register such as scientific and technical writings.

Ⅲ.Research methodology

In order to complete the experiment smoothly，the author plans to adopt the following research methodology:

An experiment is conducted to test the hypothesis:the understanding of the ideational metaphor can facilitate college English reading teaching.The hypothesis is proved by the quantitative analysis.Two groups majoring in non-English from the same university，142 participants in all，are involved in the experiment.They are divided into two classes.One group(n=68)receiving the training treatment is set as the experimental group(EG)while the other(n=74)as the control group(CG).The experiment is conducted in the following three stages:(1)the questionnaire meets the participants.Then a pretest for both groups is held at the beginning of the semester.(2)the author of this paper finds out all applications of ideational grammatical metaphor in New Horizon College English.Then a whole semester is devoted to developing and enhancing the participants’ ability on ideational grammatical metaphor in the experimental group.The other group is taught in a traditional way;(3)all the participants in the two groups are required to finish the same two tests in half an hour.The results of the questionnaire and two tests are employed to compare the achievements of the two groups and all experimental data are analyzed with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Science(SPSS 13.0).

Ⅳ.The Hypothesis of the Experiment

As is discussed，the theory of ideational grammatical metaphor contributes much to the college English reading teaching.However，this is only a theoretical analysis;its validity and wide application to the practical teaching are still to be examined.In order to investigate further whether it was suitable and helpful for college English students to comprehend articles from the perspective of ideational grammatical metaphor，and to grasp the text completely，the author of this paper applied the theory of ideational grammatical metaphor in this experiment to the teaching practice.For this purpose，the author raised two hypotheses.

(1)Null-hypothesis

In the practical teaching of reading，to apply the theory of ideational grammatical metaphor to the analysis of the college English texts will be helpless for EFL Chinese college students to comprehend text and will not be contributive to developing their reading competence，that is to say，the new method and the traditional method will produce the same result.

H0:A=B

(2)Alternative-hypothesis

In the practical teaching of reading，to apply the theory of ideational grammatical metaphor to the analysis of the college English texts will be helpful for EFL Chinese college students to comprehend texts and be contributive to developing their reading ability.Therefore，the new method(which is the combination with the traditional method)will produce a better result.

H1:A≠B

The Procedures of the experiment include the pretest of the experiment，the teaching process，the posttest of the experiment and data analysis.

Ⅴ.Implications to the Teaching of College English Reading

From the results we can see that the application of ideational grammatical metaphor to the teaching of reading has contributed a lot to developing students' reading ability in a short time.Therefore，some implications can be gotten from the experiment.

Firstly，the results of the present study indicate that the application of the ideational grammatical metaphor to the teaching of English reading is the crucial factor to make students make rapid progress in reading.With the help of the understanding of ideational grammatical metaphor，students can have a better understanding of the whole text.

Secondly，the teaching of ideational grammatical metaphor can make EFL students make significant improvement in their reading ability in a short time(about three month)，which indicates that the theory can be taught as an important strategy to develop their reading ability.

Thirdly，the significant differences between the scores of EG and CG in the posttest may also bring inspiration to the traditional teaching method，which indicates that it is not sufficient for English teachers to lay emphasis only on micro elements，equal importance should also be given to the macro-structures of text.

[參考文獻]

[1]Halliday，M.A.K.Introduction to Functional Grammar.London:Edward Arnold，1985.

[2]Halliday，M.A.K.Introduction to Functional Grammar.2nd edition.London:Edward Arnold，1994.

[3]Halliday，M.A.K. Christian M.I.M.Matthiessen.Construing Experience Through Meaning.A Language-based Approach to Cognition.London and New York:Cassell，1999.

[4]范文芳:《語法隱喻理論研究》，外語教學與研究出版社2001年版。

[5]韓寶成:《外語教學科研中的統計方法》，外語教學與研究出版社2000年版。