Cultural Connotation And College English Vocabulary Teaching

Vocabulary teaching and learning has long been regarded as the core and the most difficult part of college English teaching and learning by the majority of college English teachers and learners. Many researchers have been contributing to developing students' skills in memorizing words while fewer to enhancing students' interests in learning vocabulary by introducing cultural connotation of some words and improving students' competence to appropriately use words. Besides, one of the seven objects of culture teaching proposed by Seelye is cultural connotations of words and phrases. Thus, based on the findings of a survey, this thesis discussed necessity and some possible ways of introducing culture in vocabulary teaching with the purpose to improve students' language competence and inspire their interests in vocabulary learning.This thesis consists of six chapters, intending to present the indispensable relationship between culture and vocabulary teaching and to provide some feasible activities in vocabulary teaching process. The first chapter generally introduces the content of the thesis and author's motivation for the writing of this thesis. The second chapter discusses the relationship between vocabulary and culture by pointing out that vocabulary, as a basic element of language, is undoubtedly influenced by culture since it is universally accepted that language is a carrier of culture. The third chapter puts emphasis on lexical connotations in different cultures. The fourth chapter analyzes the situation of current vocabulary teaching by a survey consisting of three questionnaires. In the fifth chapter, possible approaches and some concrete classroom activities are put forward for reference. The last chapter serves as a conclusion of the thesis. The aim of this thesis is to be helpful in developing English learners' cross-cultural communicative competence by means of introducing cultural connotation of lexis, which could be found in the last chapter.