A Study On Senior English Vocabulary Teaching Based On Prototype Category Theory

Vocabulary learning is a process of continuous expansion throughout learner's whole life.Learners must enrich their vocabulary knowledge to meet the changes in the society and the times.According to the new English Curriculum Standards,the emphasis is laid on expanding students' vocabulary.The effect of memorizing vocabulary by rote learning is not so ideal.Without mastering the approach of vocabulary learning,students can not form their vocabulary networks.Cognitive linguistic research has shown that human beings' cognition based on categorization focuses on the words in the basic level,of which prototypical meanings of the words are deeply impressed in mind.Human's mental processing and thinking based on the basic level of category include four aspects:perception,function,knowledge organization and verbal communication.Students are supposed to center on the vocabulary of the basic level,and then expand the vocabulary of superordinate level and subordinate level.They are also supposed to learn how to acquire the prototypical meaning,and then expand different lexical meanings through the ways of association,metaphor and metonymy.In this way,students can effectively improve the breadth and depth of vocabulary and meanwhile reduce their burden of memory.In this thesis,the author uses Book 5 and Book 6 of New Senior English for China by People's Education Press as teaching materials,providing a sample vocabulary lesson The United Kingdom of Unit 2,Book 5.Combining with modern educational technology,the author carries out the experimental teaching and explores the effectiveness of English vocabulary teaching based on prototype category theory with collecting and analyzing the experimental data.The findings of the study are as follows: Firstly,at the end of the semester,students of the experimental class have made great progress in vocabulary tests and English comprehensive tests while students of the controlled class have made a little progress in both kinds of tests.Secondly,the vocabulary teaching method guided by prototype category theory can improve students' lexical competence to a great extent.Thirdly,the improvement of the students' overall English proficiency is correlated with theimprovement of lexical competence.This study also shows that vocabulary teaching based on prototype category theory can effectively stimulate students' association,enhance their cognition abilities,promote processing and integrating of vocabulary,form a categorized network schema,and finally promote students' long-term memory of vocabulary.The implication and value of this study lie in some ideas of this research design,which can offer some enlightenment for teachers committed to the foundation education of English in senior high schools and help students improve their lexical competence effectively.