The Theoretical Foundation Of "the Lexical Leading Approach" For Chinese As A Second Language Teaching

Vocabulary and grammar have been considered as the two categories of basic pattern in language. Grammar, with the high generality, productivity and description, has been taken as research center of language for a long time. Moreover, the generation of language is regarded to be the product of grammar rules. Vocabulary, in contrast with the voice and grammar system, which only take control of dozens of units or hundreds of units at most, is an open system with the complicated meaning of words, so it is difficult to find the internal connection of lexical meanings. In fact, vocabulary has been marginalized in the study of language and language teaching.After1950s, the developments of cognitive science and lexical linguistic theory have promoted the understanding of language and language teaching, through which the core position of meaning has been recognized in language. At the same time, People realize that vocabulary plays an important role in comprehension and expression, cognition and acquisition of language. Under this background,"the Lexical Leading Approach" theory proposes the opinion that vocabulary plays a leading role in Chinese as a second language teaching, and claims to construct a new system with vocabulary as the core in Chinese as a second language teaching. This dissertation intends to reveal the leading role of the lexical meaning in language from mechanism?language acquisition?cognitive function, aiming to provide a new perspective and theoretical basis for the study of language teaching approach.This dissertation consists of seven parts, except the first part "introduction" and the last part "conclusion". The main content is divided into five chapters.The first chapter analyzes the background of "the Lexical Leading Approach (LLA)". At present, there are many kinds of language teaching approaches in second language teaching. But the constant change of teaching approaches shows that the present teaching approaches have not solved the problems in second language teaching very well; low efficiency of the second language teaching is a common phenomenon, so is the Chinese as a second language teaching. About the importance of vocabulary and grammar in language, people have recognized the important role of semantics, and the focus of study has been transformed from form to semantic. The above facts make people know that there are some weak parts in the Chinese teaching method based on form, which lay the reality foundation for the proposing of "the Lexical Leading Approach"The second chapter elaborates the connotations and the basic ideas of "the Lexical Leading Approach". Because "teaching method" is a concept of multi-level, this chapter firstly clarifies the concept of "teaching method" and definite "the Lexical Leading Approach" as language teaching methodology in "law", which is the principle to guide the teaching of Chinese as a second language. Then, the basic principles and objectives of "the Lexical Leading Approach" will be discussed. Vocabulary is the core of language teaching; the cultivation of learners' language cognitive development is the goal of language teaching.The third chapter discusses the theoretical basis of "the Lexical Leading Approach" from the language inherent mechanism. This part inspects integrated function from the relationship between vocabulary and pronunciation, semantics, syntax, pragmatic, and discusses the leading role of vocabulary in language operation from the syntactic-semantic interface, and investigates the core role of Chinese words in the syntactic realization from the Chinese characteristics. The core role of vocabulary in language system lays the language inherent mechanism foundation for "the Lexical Leading Approach".The fourth chapter discusses the theoretical basis of "The Lexical Leading Approach" from human cognition and information processing. Firstly, vocabulary shows dynamic character in use under the promotion of cognition. The dynamic development of lexical meaning is mainly manifested in the lexical combination, polymerization and metaphor, which follows certain regularities:conceptual meaning provides "basic fact" of the objective things; lexical semantics shows a dynamic process under the promotion of cognition on "basic facts". That is to say, the dynamics of lexical meaning are constrained by "the basic facts". Secondly, this chapter discusses the fundamental role of vocabulary in language processing:mental lexicon in long-term memory is the foundation of language processing; the understanding and memorizing sentences is based on the meaning, too. The core role of vocabulary in language cognition lays the cognition foundation for "the Lexical Leading Approach"The fifth chapter discusses the practical basis of "the Lexical Leading Approach" from the view of language acquisition. Language acquisition of children is the cognitive process from vocabulary to grammar and from concrete to abstract. The context plays an important role in determining the relation between semantic? syntactic, and functions, forming solid cognitive structure for children. Though the first language acquisition and second language acquisition are different in some aspects, they consistent in essence:containing the same acquisition process——the cognitive process from concrete to abstract. Chinese teaching method based on the vocabulary will help learners to construct second language cognitive system.