On Pragmatic Factors In College English Vocabulary Teaching

TFEL has been too much influenced by structuralism and laid its stress on teaching the knowledge system. Teachers would regard vocabulary teaching mostly as improving students' vocabulary size or teaching the literal meaning of words.In semantics, meaning is mainly classified into two kinds: conceptual meaning and denotative meaning. Conceptual meaning refers to the connotative aspect of words while denotative meaning refers to the denotative aspect. However, sometimes, meanings have emotional and rhetoric functions so as to express speakers' true meaning and also their emotion. These meanings are called pragmatic meanings. The pragmatic factor in vocabulary teaching mainly refers to fostering students' ability to use words appropriately in certain contexts.The author of this thesis made some research, trying to find out whether the relevance exists among pragmatic factors, vocabulary size and students' linguistic competence. The results demonstrate that vocabulary size is not necessarily related to students' linguistic competence while pragmatic competence is more related to linguistic competence.Since meaning and context are the two main concepts in pragmatics, in vocabulary teaching, we should combine these two together. The most effective measure to help students' master pragmatic meaning so as to improve their pragmatic competence is to apply context theories. According to the theory of context, context is classified into linguistic knowledge and extra-linguistic knowledge. With the help of linguistic knowledge and extra-linguistic knowledge, teachers can help foster students' pragmatic competence. Culture, as the largest context, should also be considered as an important factor in vocabulary teaching, too.By teaching students the knowledge in context that is closely related to certain words, teachers can make students be clearer about pragmatic meanings as well as improving their pragmatic competence and comprehensive competence.. Therefore, the author of this thesis strongly believes that teachers should teach in accordance to the concrete situation and specific aptitude of students. The author also believes that the method of applying the theory of context plays a beneficial role in vocabulary teaching...