Abstract: To improve basic teaching of English majors, the study makes an analysis on metonymic expressions in the basic teaching materials. There exist four levels of metonymy in the teaching materials, metonymy on the vocabulary level being the major one. Vocabulary teaching, one of the emphases in basic education, should, therefore, stress the central meanings of polysemantics and altered parts of speech with lexicalization. Metonymy on higher levels in the teaching materials indicates that it is necessary to train the students’ metonymic thinking.