Prototype Teaching Strategy

This thesis reports a research experiment in the field of L2 lexical cognition or rather EFL or ESL lexical cognition through the application of prototypes to Chinese students. The main objective of the thesis is to find a method of lexical cognition in respect to prototypes in order to facilitate L2 lexical cognition. Another objective of the thesis is to try to arouse the attention of the present English language trainers and researchers both in and out of China to this issue.Two major groups of students are chosen for this research experiment, the participant group and the comparative group, the non-participants. The participant group is composed of two groups of students; one group is fifty middle school students and the other group, fifty college sophomores. The non-participant group is composed of fifty students selected for the comparison; they are their peers with the same or similar language proficiency level as the participants, half from the same middle school and the rest from the same college.The experiment is mainly done at school along with regular school term. It is carried out in three succeeding steps. The first step concerns a pre-experiment research, which aims to pave the way for the main experiment. It includes a survey done to the one hundred Chinese students who learn English as a foreign language and the analyses of the possible factors that may influence the prototypes in L2 or English lexical cognition. Taking these factors into consideration and trying to keep them under control, a main experiment is carried out to train the students or participants with their lexical cognition in respect to prototypes. The factors of the variables that might influence L2 prototype cognition are mainly cultural background or personal experience, L1 language feature, education and sex. The experiment lasts for half a school year. The third step is another survey to reveal the result of the experiment, i.e. whether prototypes can promote the development of students' lexical cognition. The result is positive.