A Study On Connectionism In College English Vocabulary Teaching

Vocabulary is always an essential part in language learning process. Students must learn large amount of words. However, vocabulary has been neglected in programs for teachers during much of the twentieth century. In recent years, more language students and teachers pay attention to vocabulary learning, and began to realize the important role played by words in language learning process. Based on connectionism, words are not independent units, but interconnected in the form of semantic networks. Words should be learned scientifically in semantic word system formed gradually, but simply piled up or understood its meanings. This is important for ESL learning.According to PDP model, this research attempts to apply the connection between words in guiding language teaching. In a pedagogical sense, it is hoped that the results from the research can offer much help on the effectiveness of vocabulary learning, and provide some insights to second language vocabulary teaching and learning, thereby assisting the development of vocabulary learning and teaching in the sense of connectionism. This thesis attempts to inform students to get the idea that words are correlated with each other in some network. There are a number of different types of lexical relations. A particular lexeme may be simultaneously in a number of these relations, so it may be more accurate to think of the lexicon as a network. Sense relation based on the semantic network of lexicon includes synonymy, polysemy, homonymy, hyponymy and antonymy. This research also hopes to help students memorizing words in the network, improving their vocabulary, and enhancing their language ability. Meanwhile, it is also hoped that the results will have some practical values to help language teachers adopting more effective ways to facilitate the productive vocabulary learning and to design suitable teaching program for broadening vocabulary.This thesis first provides necessary background knowledge, the current situation and trend on vocabulary learning and teaching, and the purpose and significance of this research. Secondly, it defines connectionism, and some key points used in this field, some theoretical foundations for this study, including PDP memory model and semantic network. Thirdly, this thesis conducts the methodology in teaching process under the theory of connectionism. Then it describes the study results in detail, concerns the general descriptive statistics and data analysis. The results are interpreted in an attempt to answer research questions raised before. Finally, it draws a conclusion for the whole study. Based on this study, it can be concluded that connectionism can make vocabulary study more interesting and practical.