| It has to be rationally recognized that vocabulary mastery has momentousconsequences for college English learning and teaching, as vocabulary, one of thebasic elements that consist of the language, is the most essential component for one toexpress the language. During English learning, without vocabulary it is hard tocommunicate with others and it is impossible to better language productive skills andreceptive skills like listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Apart from academicrequirements, nation-building and personal development make students’ English leveland the level of vocabulary that in a way reflects level of English increasinglyimportant, with this country’s reform and opening up further. Furthermore, vocabularyteaching has become the main basis of selection of language curriculum and a varietyof language examination syllabus and assessment of objectives, propositionsconcerned. For instance, in CET exams, difficulty of reading part basically attributesto weak vocabulary, as candidates with poor vocabulary level can not accuratelyinterpret content of what is written, which is the major cause of losing points. Thewriting part reflects that most candidates have poor ability to use appropriatevocabulary and can not express their own ideas appropriately. Even worse, in theactual teaching, quite a few instructors tend to focus too much on grammar andsentence explanation and drills and other aspects of language, but word learning, say,recitation of words after class is thought to be the students’ own thing, which results ina weak link. Learners lack vocabulary knowledge. They can neither memorize wordsinefficiently, nor can they understand etymology of words, their connection amongwords, so the basic meanings of even common words can not be mastered accuratelyand completely, and understood if occasion or collocation is changed.In view of the situation of vocabulary teaching that leaves much to be desired,English educators and instructors have been exploring new and more effective didactics and theories which may reflect the regularity of lexis and much progress hasbeen made. To name a few, some regularity findings include use of word list, wordclassification according to semantic field, word frequency studies, oral vocabulary,similarities and differences between oral and written vocabulary, words match, androle of context in vocabulary learning, theory of positive words and negative words,theoretical model of vocabulary acquisition, performance of vocabulary acquisition inform and meaning, the impact of mother tongue on second language vocabularyacquisition, tips on acquisition of second language written words, learners’ strategiesin vocabulary learning as well as vocabulary teaching methods based on what ismentioned above, syllabus design, dictionaries use, and vocabulary tests.However, it is far from satisfactory that although much effort has been exertedand much achievement has been made for vocabulary regularity and memorization,underlying regularity of lexis and problem solving method for low efficiency in lexisteaching have still been in the process of exploration and adjustment.Luckily it is that dawn is beginning to show in the linguistic field when cognitivelinguistics has been constructed, theories of which reflect truth of a language and itssource and formation sustained by facts. The approach of cognitive analysis of alanguage and its lexis from vantage point of cognitive linguistics can make a lot ofinspirations of cognitive linguistics for EFL teaching, especially vocabulary teaching.Among many brand-new cognitive theories that cognitive linguistics brings aboutobjectively reflect how men use language mentally, one of the most influentialtheories which stand out is metaphor theory, esp. conceptual metaphor theory byLakoff and Johnson which has extensively used value and could be applied into lexisstudies. By cognitive linguists it is argued that people’s common experiences of theworld are stored in everyday language, so it can be collected from the way ofexpressing thoughts. In order develop this rich treasure--language, we have to jumpout of the shackles of sentence structure, and try to research analogy-based language,particularly metaphor, that is, transplanting our experience of specific objects to theunderstanding of abstract concepts through metaphor is a very effective and commoncognitive method. It is natural for us to assume that the research of metaphor and its related concepts becomes an important dimension and approach for vocabularylearning as well as vocabulary teaching methods.The main purpose of this essay is to explore whether conceptual metaphortheory is workable in vocabulary teaching and learning of the non-English majorstudents of vocational college. It tries to answer four questions as follows:1. What kinds of method have non-English major Chinese college students usedin English vocabulary learning?2. What are the approximate factors that may make those students not recitevocabulary well and understand them correctly?3. What is the relationship between learning and cognitive training of conceptualmetaphor theory and improvement of vocabulary memory capabilities forChinese college English students?4. What are good ways to teach and train conceptual metaphor theory and relatedconcepts to college English learners?This research dissertation mainly consists of four parts.The first part is a chapter about the literature review of current situations inChinese College English vocabulary teaching and pedagogical researches erstwhile athome and abroad, theories pertinent to cognitive linguistics and conceptual metaphorincluding its related image schema theory, prototypical theory, and metaphorical andmetonymical mechanism and so forth, and how-to of applying those recent linguistictheories into the study. The second part discusses research methodology in whichquestions, participants, instruments and experimental procedures and so forth havebeen expounded. The experiment is comprised of three stages: a pre-experimentalstage, an experimental stage and a post-experimental stage. A questionnaire, pre-testand post-test with some vocabulary samples are conducted among sixty sophomoreswho are from Computer Science Department in Jilin Provincial Institute of Educationwho are divided into two groups, control class and experimental class with a designedtraining conducted in experimental group four class hours per week throughout twelveconsecutive weeks of empirical research. The third part is the analysis and discussionof experimental results. On one hand, the author analyzes and discusses the results of questionnaire through quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis. Experimentalclass and controlled class students have done a questionnaire related to the Englishvocabulary before the experiment at the same time, the results show that the Englishlevel of these two class students are similar before the experiment, they have notcontacted with the cognitive or conceptual metaphor theory before, they just usetraditional vocabulary learning methods to memorize words before. On The otherhand, the author analyzes the data obtained after the experiments of two classes fromfour perspectives:(1) basic grasp of cognitive theory;(2) applications of conceptualmetaphor theory and other related cognitive theories into the English vocabularylearning;(3) mastery of prototype theory and image schema theory;(4) the effect ofvocabulary acquisition. Analysis of the data obtained before and after the experimentresults show that the experimental class and control class are similar before theexperiment, but, there is a significant difference between the controlled class and theexperimental class with conceptual metaphor theory, and other related cognitivetheories, and the experimental class performs better than the control class. The fourthsection sets out the main findings of this study, implications, limitations andrecommendations for future research.Of course, it is pretty significant to develop students’ English vocabularylearning ability based on real understanding of concepts and origins of English lexisand relations of entries in a word which reflects students’ English thinking ability. Inview of the fact that Chinese vocabulary teaching is not very satisfactory at present, itis natural for us to assume that the research of application of conceptual metaphor andits related concepts in cognitive linguistics can be tried as an important approach forvocabulary learning and teaching methods. And, it shows that the experiment rendersthe answer to the hunch that this didactics is workable in vocabulary learning andteaching, especially in vocational college.Therefore, the effectiveness of application of conceptual metaphor theoryreveals that it can truly improve students’ vocabulary level excluding certainlimitations in the experiment, and the model is effective to guide Chinese vocationalcollege students’ English vocabulary teaching method. |
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