Based on reading the text, the author assigned the following writing tasks: Write a passage with the title Different Culture, Different Meanings based on 3.

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2025-08-19

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In junior high school English reading teaching, metaphor theory is used to cultivate students' cultural awareness

Chen Yahong

Abstract: Metaphor is not only a rhetorical method, but also a cognitive method. Cultural teaching through metaphors is an effective way to teach cultural teaching in English reading teaching in junior high school. Based on specific reading lesson teaching cases, the author shows how to compare metaphors at the English-Chinese animal and plant vocabulary levels through metaphorical comparisons at the three stages before, during and after reading, so as to enable students to understand the differences between Chinese and Western cultures, thereby training students' metaphorical thinking, improving their sensitivity and discrimination ability to the differences and differences between Chinese and foreign cultures, and enhancing their cultural awareness. Applying metaphor theory to teaching English reading classes in junior high school can effectively improve students' cultural awareness.

Keywords: metaphor; reading teaching; cultural awareness

1. Introduction

"Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards (2011 Edition)" (Ministry of Education, 2012; hereinafter referred to as the "Curriculum Standards") Positioning cultural awareness and language knowledge, language skills, emotional attitudes, and learning strategies as the five overall goals of English courses. Cultural awareness includes cultural knowledge, cultural understanding, cross-cultural communication awareness and cross-cultural communication ability. However, as an important part of the curriculum goal system, the cultivation of students' cultural awareness has not received due attention in actual reading teaching. Specifically, the "Curriculum Standard" does not list the specific content of cultural consciousness in detail like pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, and teachers do not know what to teach (Tong Xiuwen et al., 2016); teachers do not attach importance to the cultivation of students' cultural consciousness. Many teachers only pay attention to the explanation and practice of language knowledge points in class, and there is a phenomenon of teaching what to test and rarely explore the cultural background of vocabulary and the cultural connotation carried by the discourse; the language environment is not strong. There is a lack of activities to cultivate students' cultural awareness in classroom teaching, and cultural awareness is not fully reflected in teaching activities. At the same time, the influence of Chinese on students' cultural awareness is deeply rooted. Due to the negative transfer of Chinese, students will unconsciously apply the cultural communication model of Chinese to English in English learning, which will lead to students not being able to correctly understand and use the language appropriately.

2. Metaphor theory and reading course teaching based on cultural awareness cultivation

Metaphor originally refers to a rhetorical method, which means a transformation of "there is one and the other" in English. Hou Yisong (2011) believes that metaphor is based on a similarity between two unrelated things, and transferring the name of one thing to another. Metaphor must involve two things, one as the starting point and the other as the destination. Lekoff and Johnson pointed out that there are two criteria for confirming metaphors: ① Ontology and metaphors belong to different activities ② only involve the use of some characteristics (quoted from Shudingfang , 2000). Lan Chun (2005: 116) believes that the metaphor contains two parts: a origin domain and a target domain. Each field has its own special schema structure. The cognitive power of metaphor lies in mapping the schema structure of the origin domain to the target domain. Shu Dingfang (2000: 43) believes that metaphorical meaning is a mapping between two semantic fields. There are two definitions of metaphors: broad and narrow. Aristotle once called all rhetorical phenomena metaphorical language; Aristotle believed that metaphorical and simile were a comparison between different things. Lekoff and others regarded metonymy, syncdoche and irony as metaphors (quoted from Shu Dingfang, 2000: 11). Metaphor is essentially cognizable, it is a way of thinking expressed through language.

Metaphor is part of culture and reflects people's understanding of the cultural world. There are obvious differences in the use of metaphors between different cultures. The differences in English and Chinese metaphors come from different lifestyles, natural environments, cultural traditions, cognitive methods, etc. of different ethnic groups. Through metaphors, various scattered cultural phenomena can be organized, thereby deepening the understanding of cultural differences and thinking modes among different ethnic groups. Metaphorical teaching can enable students to understand the relationship between language and culture, enrich students' language and culture knowledge, and cultivate students' metaphorical thinking and creativity.

Cultural teaching cannot be independent of language teaching. The process of reading class teaching is the process of mastering the language and culture. Metaphor is produced from experience and is an integral part of culture. Many contents in culture are expressed and inherited through metaphors. Through the window of metaphor, culture can be seen through. Therefore, teaching culture through metaphor is a smooth thing (Wang Shouyuan and Liu Zhenqian, 2003, quoted from Hou Yisong 2011:142). The Standard) points out: "English courses in the compulsory education stage have both instrumental and humanistic nature... In terms of humanity, the English courses undertake the task of improving students' comprehensive humanistic literacy, that is, through the English courses, students can broaden their horizons, enrich their life experience, form cross-cultural consciousness, enhance the spirit of patriotism, develop innovative ability, and form good character and correct outlook on life and values." (Ministry of Education, 2012: 2) Metaphor is a very common discourse phenomenon. Lekoff and Johnson (2015) pointed out in the book " Metaphor on which we live", that metaphors are everywhere, not only in language, but also in thought and behavior. There are many reading discourses with profound metaphorical connotations in English textbooks at all levels since junior high school. These discourses are valuable course resources, and the development and utilization of these course resources will enrich classroom teaching content and make English classes more realistic, vivid and effective. This article intends to use metaphorical theory and combine it with junior high school English reading class teaching to help students develop cultural awareness.

3. Application of metaphor in cultural teaching

This article takes the Section C reading teaching of Renai English Grade 9 Volume 1 Unit 3 Topic 2 "Some things usually have different meanings in different cultures" as an example, and adopts the overall teaching model. Activate the cognitive schema before reading; while-reading will make a macro grasp of the reading text, understand the subject and general framework of the article, and then analyze each part in depth to achieve a deep understanding of the text; the Post-reading link will be extended and expanded based on the text content and topic.

(I) Teaching content analysis

The central topic of this unit is that some things have different meanings in different cultures. Section C explores cultural differences from the discourse level, which includes five teaching contents: 1a is the discourse part, and the reading text is divided into four paragraphs: the first paragraph generally summarizes the differences in Chinese and Western cultures; the second and third paragraphs take dogs and dragons as examples to specifically introduce the metaphorical differences in Chinese and Western cultures; the fourth paragraph takes roses as an example to illustrate the metaphorical similarities between Chinese and Western cultures. 1b is to choose the correct answer based on 1a reading; 1c is to let students complete the form after learning 1a; 2a is to complete sentence exercises in the appropriate form of the given phrase; 3 present the metaphorical meanings expressed by peacock, bat, bamboo and other words in Chinese and Western cultures in the form of a table, and students are required to write an article based on the content of the table with the title of Different Culture and Different Meanings.

(II) Analysis of the academic situation

Lin Chongde (1999) believes that junior high school students are in the late stage of the "formal computing stage" (ages 12-15 years old) of cognitive development theory of Piaget . Thinking activities are abstract, the general level is improved, and the independence and criticality of thinking have developed greatly (quoted from Wang Qiang , Chen Zehang, 2016:5). Students are able to correctly treat the differences and similarities between Chinese and foreign cultures and have a strong curiosity about Western culture. They have mastered the metaphorical mechanism of their native language, which is very beneficial for learning English metaphors. Therefore, students can compare and analyze the phenomenon of the use of English-Chinese vocabulary metaphors, so as to understand cultural differences and enhance cultural awareness.

(III) Teaching Objectives

Based on the analysis of teaching content and learning situation, the author presets teaching objectives are as follows:

1. Students can understand and master the meaning of idioms about "dog" and "dragon" in the text;

2. Students can correctly understand the special meanings of the expression of English idioms containing animals and plants, and can appropriately use these words to express them;

3. Students can think of Western cultures corresponding to or similar to their national culture, compare differences with their national culture, and improve their sensitivity and inclusion to the similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign cultures.

(IV) Teaching process

(1) Activate the cognitive schema in the pre-reading link

1. Carry out brainstorming , activate thinking

Brainstorming is a group activity in language teaching. Learners conduct free discussions on designated topics as a way to form various perspectives (Lu Ziwen et al., 2008:80). Brainstorming provides students with a platform for mutual communication, so that each student's thinking can be explored to the maximum extent in the shortest time, and students can brainstorm, thereby greatly improving learning efficiency. Students’ original background knowledge is crucial to learning. When students learn new knowledge, they always associate new knowledge with their original knowledge. The more original knowledge related to topics (such as Chinese metaphors and dog concepts) stored in the student’s brain, the less difficult it is to read the text. The metaphorical content learned in this lesson is related to dogs, and dogs are very familiar to students. In order to activate students' original background knowledge, the author asked students to say as many words related to dogs as possible. The students suddenly said many words about dogs, such as dogs relying on human power, dogs looking down at people's eyes, dogs biting dogs, etc.

When talking about "dog", the reason why students think of mostly derogatory metaphors is that on the one hand, the students' understanding of the characteristics of "dog" is not comprehensive enough, and they do not see the positive side of "dog" such as loyalty and cuteness. On the other hand, students' discussions are limited to the vocabulary level and lack specific context. So the author uses illustrations to create context to help students understand the metaphors expressed in the text more comprehensively.

2. Using illustrations to create context

illustrations are an important part of the textbook, and the illustrations contain rich information. Junior high school students have lively personalities, concrete thinking, and illustrations can better concentrate students' attention and increase students' interest in learning. Using illustrations can connect the new information to be input with the knowledge structure in the student's brain, activate the students' original content schema, mobilize students to think actively, and thus keep thinking activities in an active state. Illustrations and text form multimodal discourse, and students enhance their understanding of the discourse under the joint guidance of illustrations and text. In the current Renaissance version of the English textbook, each topic has a reading, and almost every reading is equipped with at least one illustration related to the content of the reading text. Illustrations are closely related to the text, complement each other, and jointly complete the construction of meaning. The author uses PPT to show students the illustrations in the text. In this picture, a dog is holding a rose in his mouth and is about to offer it to a smiling girl sitting opposite him. The whole picture presents the beauty of natural harmony, and the metaphorical concept expressed by the illustration is My love is a red rose.

The basis of metaphor lies in the similarity between the ontology and the metaphor. In traditional Chinese culture, roses and girls are beautiful things. Comparing women to flowers or comparing flowers to women is a common metaphor. The two can be connected and even identified. As a metaphor for women's beauty, "rose" symbolizes the plumpness and beauty of women. Map the vicious and greedy characteristics of "dog" (original domain) to the human body (original domain), thus forming a metaphorical concept. "Dog" often has a derogatory meaning, containing the emotional tone of swearing people, and comparing people to dogs has a clear contempt. Two different things appear in the illustration at the same time, forming a sharp contrast. So the author asked the students to think about the following question: Why do dogs, roses and girls work together to build a harmonious picture? The purpose of designing this question is to enable students to understand that metaphor is a language phenomenon framed by context. Not only does metaphor judgment require context, but the understanding of metaphor meaning is also inseparable from context. We cannot use our previous perception of "dog" to understand the metaphor it expresses in the illustration. The dog in the illustration shows people with a friendly image. Some characteristics of "dog", such as loyalty, friendship, and abiding by duties, are similar to the characteristics of "friends". The characteristics of "dogs" are reflected in the perception of "friends", so we can draw the metaphorical concept that "dogs are human friends". This also lays the foundation for students to learn the metaphor of "dog" in Western culture.

(2) Reading links deeply understand the content of the discourse

Reading links are an important process for students to input and internalize language in combination with the original cognitive schema, and are a key link for teachers to use metaphorical theory to cultivate students' cultural awareness. Therefore, the author uses the metaphor about animals and plants mentioned in the text to allow students to understand the text content from shallow to deeper to obtain text information, thereby improving cultural awareness.

1. Read the discourse for the first time, understand the topic, and select the title

The title is part of the discourse and is a high-level summary of the content of the discourse. The layout of the article must revolve around the title, so the title plays an important role in reading teaching. The reading requirements in the fifth-level objectives of the "Curriculum Standards" are: "Can find out the theme in the article, understand the plot of the story, and predict the development of the plot and possible outcomes of the plot." (Ministry of Education, 2012:17) The requirements of the curriculum standards can be reflected by the interpretation of the title. Starting from the title, all teaching activities are closely related to the title, which can enable students to better understand and grasp the text as a whole, further optimize students' thinking patterns, and improve students' reading ability and knowledge acquisition ability (Huang Yongzhi, 2016).

The author asked students to adopt skimming strategy, quickly browse the full text, grasp the main content of the article, and then select the most suitable title from the four options given in the reading text. Selecting titles through skimming is aimed at cultivating students' ability to summarize the main theme and let students clarify the key content that needs to be grasped in this class. Based on the existing information such as "dog", article pictures, etc., students can determine that the title of the text should be Different Cultures, Different Meanings.

2. Analyze the structure and grasp the context

There are four paragraphs in this article. The first three paragraphs mainly introduce the differences between Chinese and Western cultures, among which the first paragraph and the second and third paragraphs belong to the total score of ; the fourth paragraph mainly explains that there are similarities between Chinese and Western cultures, forming a juxtaposition relationship with the first paragraph. The author asks students to use skimming strategies to quickly browse the full text and match each paragraph with the general paragraph of the paragraph. The matching questions are as follows:

T: Please read the article again and find the main idea of each Paragraph. Read and match.

Para 1 a. Some things have similar meanings in different cultures.

Para 2 b. Phrases about dragons in different cultures.

Para 3 c. Phrases about the dog in different cultures.

Para 4 d. Some things usually have different meanings in different cultures.

(Keys: Para 1—d; Para 2—c; Para 3—b; Para 4—a)

In this task, the author asks students to read quickly and summarize the meaning of the paragraph, aiming to cultivate students' induction and overview abilities. The characteristic of skimming is to use the title of the article, the beginning and end sentences of the paragraph and the keywords to grasp the general meaning of the article and construct the text context. Through skimming, students quickly and accurately find the main theme of each paragraph, form a holistic understanding of the whole text, and internalize the skimming strategy well during the reading process, laying the foundation for further reading the text content (Xu Ying, Wang Jingjing, 2016).

3. Pay attention to the vocabulary connotation, from the same to the differences, and gradually progress the understanding of

metaphor is closely related to cultural background knowledge. "Metaphor is a cognitive phenomenon. Although the English and Chinese languages have different cultural backgrounds, humans have similar physiological structures, psychological foundations and many common life experiences and feelings, which leads to the possible overlap of the metaphorical expressions of English and Chinese, showing cross-cultural similarity, that is, cultural common core" (Hou Yisong, 2011: 135). For example, the associations given by the image of "rose" are related to color, fragrance and the beauty of women, and represent love in both Chinese and Western cultures. It also represents peace, courage and friendship.

After the students complete the exercises of summarizing the general paragraphs, the author makes a brief adjustment to the content of the textbook and let the students learn the fourth paragraph first. The reason is: the metaphor about "rose" is "there are some parts in English and Chinese, and is easy to learn and remember. On this basis, learning different metaphors between English and Chinese can achieve twice the result with half the effort; using existing knowledge to assimilate new knowledge is a universal law of human learning" ( Hou Yisong , 2011:145).Tasks are as follows:

Task 1: Now please read Paragraph Four carefully and choose the correct answers.

1. Rose ______ in Chinese culture and western cultures.

A. has similar meanings

B. has different meanings

C. has negative meanings

2. Rose stands for the following EXCEPT _______.

A. love B. peace C. good luck D. courage

(Keys: A; C)

Vocabulary has the nature of metaphor. Metaphorizing words can increase the meaning of words, enhance the expression of words, build our thoughts and behaviors, and enable us to think and judge with vocabulary metaphors. Metaphors inspire people to see the connection between things through suggestive associations and reveal the similarity between the superficial meaning of words and their deep connotations (Hou Yisong, 2011:166). When we see the word "rose", we will think of its series of characteristics: red, charming, aromatic, thorny and other characteristics, which provide us with the possibility of knowing love, peace and courage.

Metaphor is an important source of the polysense phenomenon of the word vocabulary. People form extended meanings associated with vocabulary prototypes in different contexts. In teaching, teachers let students understand based on the prototype meaning of the vocabulary, which can help students deepen their understanding of the meaning of the word and help improve cultural awareness. In fact, there are many vocabulary of animals and plants with the same or similar metaphors among different cultures, such as grass (grass), bamboo ( bamboo ), apple (apple), etc. Teachers can selectively apply them to cultural teaching based on students' actual situation.

4. Pay attention to cultural differences and deepen metaphor understanding

Cultural differences affect the understanding of metaphor. English and Chinese metaphors have both cultural similarities and differences. Only through metaphorical comparison can we understand the completely different meanings conveyed by the same metaphorical images more comprehensively and intuitively, thereby deepening our understanding between each other, avoiding cultural conflicts, and reducing pragmatic errors caused by the influence of the mother tongue. The second and third paragraphs of the text use words about dogs and dragons as examples to illustrate the differences between Chinese and Western cultures. In response to the differences, the author guides students to complete the following tasks:

Task 1: Mark out the phrase containing "dog" in the second paragraph.

The author guides students to understand the words about dogs in Chinese, so that students can understand that "dog" is often a symbol of "bad people and bad things". When mapping words describing dogs to people, it is contempt and insulting. In comparison with Western culture, dogs are loyal friends of humans. Using dogs to describe humans usually has no derogatory meaning, and sometimes there is also a positive meaning.

Task 2: Read the third paragraph carefully and complete the following tasks.

1. In China, many parents want their children to become "dragons". The "dragons" here means ______.

A. successful people B. children

C. strong people D. creativitys

2. In western countries, heroes killed dragons to protect people. This shows dragons are considered to be ______.

A. brave B. strong

C. lovely D. dangerousous

(Keys: A; D)

metaphor has national cultural characteristics. In Han culture, the dragon is the totem of the Chinese nation. It is a symbol of auspiciousness, power or status, and a symbol of luck and success. However, dragons are a violent monster in Western culture and a symbol of evil. In his book "Detailed Etymology of English", Li Xuxue (2013) described the "dragon" in the eyes of Westerners as "a dragon that has wings but is like a lizard skin like a crocodile and has scales. It can also spray poison while spitting out fire." Through the comparison of metaphorical phenomena of "dog" and "dragon" in Chinese and Western cultures, students can understand the relationship between language and culture, deepen their understanding and grasp of different cultures, and increase cultural knowledge. After completing the above two tasks, students realized that in the face of conflicts between cultures, they should not only recognize the culture of our own nation, but also respect the culture of other nations, and view cultural differences with an inclusive mindset and critical thinking.

Task 3: Expand the discourse content after reading the link

English learning process is the process of language entry and exit and output.The language output should be based on the language input of the reading link, and the language input after reading should be consistent with the language input in the reading. Expanding and extending based on text theme content and unit topics is a principle that teachers must adhere to when designing post-reading activities ( Liang Meizhen 2014: 18). Through the study session, students have a certain understanding of the cultural factors, ideological connotation and structural framework of the article. Based on reading the text, the author assigned the following writing tasks:

Write a passage with the title Different Culture, Different Meanings based on 3.

The main purposes of this link are three: First, at the vocabulary level, expand the contact between cross-cultural knowledge, deepen the understanding of the knowledge learned, and understand the English thinking habits and authentic expressions; second, in the structure of the chapter, pay attention to the discourse level, help students plan the text layout, and improve their writing level; third, in terms of emotions, make students understand that each ethnic group has its own cultural traditions and customs, and culture itself is equal, and there is no distinction between high and low quality.

4. Conclusion

The main manifestation of metaphor is language. Metaphor is a cognitive phenomenon that reflects people's way of thinking. Applying metaphorical theory to junior high school English reading teaching can improve students' language application ability, change students' thinking style, and at the same time enhance their cultural awareness. Language has rich cultural connotations, and metaphorically inherits culture and is an integral part of culture. Many of the contents of culture are expressed through metaphors. As an English teacher, you should constantly enrich yourself, not only systematically learn metaphorical theoretical knowledge, absorb metaphor research results, but also understand Chinese and Western cultures. In actual teaching, teachers should combine metaphorical cultural teaching with language teaching. Only in this way can the ultimate goal of improving students' cultural awareness be achieved.

Note: This article is part of the research results of the special key project of the "13th Five-Year Plan for the Electrochemical Education of Henan Province's Educational Sciences "Research on the Actions of Multimodal Junior High School English Teaching in the Information Technology Environment" (Project Approval No.: [2017]-JKGHDHZX-086).

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Using the Theory of Metaphor in Junior Middle School English Reading Teaching to Cultivate the Students ’Cultural Awareness

Chen Yahong

Abstract: Metaphor is not only a kind of rhetoric, but also a cognitive style. Through metaphor culture teaching is an effective way of teaching culture teaching in Junior high school English reading teaching. The author combines case specific reading course shows how in the pre reading, while reading and post reading three aspects of animal and plant metaphors through English and Chinese lexical level the students, cultural differences exist between the metaphorical thinking and understanding, training of students, improve the sensitivity and the ability to identify the similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign culture, enhance cultural awareness of students. The application of metaphor theory in junior middle school English reading teaching can effectively improve students’ cultural awareness.

Key words: metaphor; reading teaching; cultural awareness

(This article was first published in "Research on Foreign Language Teaching in Basic Education" 2017 Issue 12)