English Vocabulary Teaching And Learning From The Perspective Of Prototype Theory And Image Schema

This thesis aims to investigate whether the combination of prototype theory and image schema could provide a new perspective for English vocabulary teaching in order to improve students’ language competence and whether the new approach is welcomed by students.In the thesis prototype theory and image schema provide theoretical bases. Prototype shares more common properties of a category and it is the specific and concrete representation of a category which has great importance in classifying a category. Image schema is pre-conceptual, abstract and creative, it enables human beings to generate and comprehend infinite meanings and concepts. Besides, image schema helps us to understand the internal connected senses of a word and it also aids people to form the prototypical meaning of the word. Under the help of image schema, mankind could know various but interconnected meanings of a word, which is the basis for human’s mind to abstract a prototype of the word. Thus, the vocabulary knowledge will be widened and the language competence will be improved.Although the application of the above cognitive concepts into vocabulary acquisition is theoretically proved, evidences from practical vocabulary teaching is needed. So a teaching experiment is designed to testify if the combination of the two cognitive concepts could enhance students’ vocabulary knowledge and language competence and whether the new method is welcomed by students. And the results give positive answers to the hypotheses.