The Main Problems And Solutions In Vocabulary Teaching In Higher Vocational Colleges

The lack of vocabulary is a "bottle-neck" which prevents students from raising their English level, so how to enlarge their vocabulary effectively has become one of the problems which experts and scholars want to solve, and there is no exception in higher vocational colleges. Therefore, it is quite necessary for us teachers to research on what the main problems are and how we can solve these problems existing in vocabulary teaching in higher vocational colleges. The thesis, consisting of five main parts, is written for this purpose.In the first part, the writer discusses the background of vocabulary teaching, the content of which includes the definition of vocabulary, the importance of English vocabulary teaching, and researches on vocabulary teaching made by scholars as well. Next, according to the special demand raised in vocabulary teaching as well as the specialties of the students in higher vocational colleges, the writer puts forward his point of view: vocabulary teaching in higher vocational colleges is worth researching.In order to certify his viewpoint, the writer makes an experimental study. On the basis of the result, he finds out that there exist two main problems in English vocabulary teaching in higher vocational colleges: one is that English teachers are lacking in scientific vocabulary teaching methods, that is, they cannot teach vocabulary in combination of word-formation knowledge, words' cultural connotations, hyponymy, context, collocation, synonymy and polysemy; The other is that students tend to memorize new words mechanically, mainly by rote.We must find some theoretical bases in order to solve these problems, so in the next part, the writer discusses from two aspects how to solve these problems theoretically. First, Leech points out that a word has seven meanings, but we tend to pay attention to its conceptual meaning while neglecting its other meanings such as connotative meaning and collocative meaning, so we cannot fully understand a word; Second, according to cognitive linguistics, the world consists of objects withdifferent substances, shapes and colours, to distinguish them involves classification, whose psychological process is categorization. Prototype is a cognitive reference point for people to categorize the world, the founding of all concepts center prototypes;Concept is the product of people's understanding the world, it is the reflection of the essence of the things. Concept is symbolized by words, so we cannot talk about the word meaning without paying attention to the formation of concept. Rosch (1973,1975) put forward that concept consists of two factors: (1)prototype or the best example; (2)degrees of category membership. She thought that prototype plays an important role in a concept, it can best represent a concept because it has common attributes with more members, such a concept has family resemblance. The world's conceptual structure includes two parts, one is the members with family resemblance and with prototype as its center, the other is the generalization of all the members' attributes. The combination of the two parts helps word meaning form a prototype category.Metaphors are a powerful cognitive tool for our conceptualization of abstract categories, its cognitive basis is schema, the principle which supports polysemy is the metaphoric reflection of schemas.With the theoretic basis, the writer discusses systematically in the next part how to solve these problems. He insists that in vocabulary teaching in higher vocational colleges, a teacher should teach the students certain word formation knowledge so as to help them enlarge their vocabulary effectively, he should teach them the word's cultural connotations, induce the words by making use of hyponymy so as to help them memorize the words. Besides, vocabulary should be taught in contexts, and in addition, the word's collocation should also be taught by a teacher. Lastly, synonyms and polysemic words cannot be neglected.