Chinese College Students’ Development Of English Lexical Prototype:A Teaching Experiment

The present study adopts teaching experiment as its research instrument to observe Chinese EFL learners’ mental process of lexical prototype formation and development. It intends to find out the patterns and feasibility of the prototypical teaching approach.On the basis of literature review on vocabulary teaching and prototype theory home and abroad, the author constructs a theoretical framework for prototypical vocabulary teaching, which includes:the development and its condition of Chinese EFL learners’ English lexical prototype; how prototypical vocabulary learning awareness enhances students’comprehensive language competence; and based on real-life vocabulary teaching practice, nine prototypical vocabulary teaching principles are proposed. Under this theoretical framework, a teaching experiment is designed, implemented, and together with instruments of questionnaires and interviews, examined the learners’ mental process of lexical prototype formation and development.This teaching experiment is launched between two teaching classes from North China Electric Power University in Beijing, with123freshmen,77and46in the experimental class and control class respectively. The experiment lasts for one semester.The major findings of the study show:(1) Chinese EFL learners’ English learning interest can be greatly aroused by prototypical vocabulary teaching because of the increased cognitive effort required by prototypical teaching and learning.(2) Prototypical vocabulary teaching is constructive for the cultivation of students’prototypical vocabulary learning awareness and strategies.(3) The principles of prototypical vocabulary teaching are verified:to expand students’ vocabulary learning by centering on the basic category vocabulary; to improve vocabulary competence by learning words with same affixes or roots; to teach hypernyms and hyponyms on the basis of prototypical words; to construct students’ prototypical semantic network; to distinguish synonyms with the help of semantic prosody; to master phrases with prepositional prototype; to feel sensory prototype, in this way students can easily get the sense of "acid" for example when it is used for personality description etc.