A Study Of The Application Of Lexical Categories In College French Vocabulary Teaching Based On Comparison Between English And French

College French course is designed for non-French major undergraduates who havelearned English for years. According to national College French Syllabus, students arerequired to have a good mastery of correct pronunciation, solid grammar and a certain amountof vocabulary, and to use the vocabulary proficiently with the purpose of strengthening whatthey’ve learned about the language. Therefore, vocabulary plays a significant role in Frenchlearning. The theory of learning transfer is often applied in foreign language learning andteaching. College French teaching and learning based on the theory can help further expandthe application of the theory of learning transfer. There’re many studies focusing on theapplication of Chinese language transfer in English language learning, yet, researches onEnglish language transfer to French language learning are relatively less. In this context, theauthor has designed and conducted a study of a10-week lexical approach experiment, basedon the theory of learning transfer and the lexical category-based approach. The study adoptsqualitative and quantitative analysis, and the French words are categorized based on thecomparison between French and English languages. The aim of classification is to maximizethe positive transfer of English learning to French vocabulary learning.The author puts forward a lexical approach and applies it in his classroom teaching forthe purpose of investigating the effectiveness of the lexical approach. Thus, a ten-weekteaching experiment has been designed. In each week, the same ninety French words aredistributed to one experimental class and one control class. The author applies the new lexicalapproach based on the five similar characteristics of English and French lexical categories tohelp the students learn the words more efficiently in experimental class, but not in the controlclass. In addition, the final test on French vocabulary is designed based on the exercisepatterns in a book named French Vocabulary Progression edited by professor Cao Deming(published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House). All the vocabulary in the final test outof the nine hundred French words is selected at random by Microsoft Office Excel, serving asa measurement tool. At the end of the ten-week experiment, the students in both the experimental and the control classes take a same French vocabulary test. For the reliabilityand validity, the author conducts a questionnaire survey and some interviews with thestudents in the experimental class. The finding shows that, the lexical category-based teachingmethod is effective in enlarging students’ French vocabulary, and arousing students’ interestand promoting their self-confidence in French vocabulary learning as well. The study is notonly an exploration and supplement to the theory of learning transfer, but also provides someenlightenments to college French vocabulary teaching.