Vocabulary Memorization In Learning English As A Foreign Language: From The Category Perspective

Vocabulary acquisition is one of the basic elements in learning English well. In recent years, one of the much debated issues in L2 vocabulary acquisition is the following question: What is more effective and efficient for L2 vocabulary acquisition: (1) letting learners infer the meaning of an unknown word through context, or (2) looking up the new words in the dictionary, or (3) providing learners with the meaning of unknown words directly and letting them memorize them. The methods above have their own advantages and disadvantages. We should apply them to vocabulary memorization comprehensively. While, recently much research has shown that many researchers put too much emphasis on inferring and looking up the dictionary but ignore the importance of memorizing new words directly. Though researchers suggest the use of inferring word meanings and ignore direct memorization, the fact demonstrates that most of the learners like to memorize words directly, which is the issue we should consider and explore. Other research indicates that memorizing words directly makes learner accumulate large vocabulary size within a relatively short time.The purpose of this thesis is to help learners remove the burden of vocabulary memorization by exploring the difficulties of vocabulary learning. It is hoped that this study can contribute to their success in vocabulary learning by encouraging them to learn words actively, deeply and efficiently. So the author proposed to memorize words directly with the help of the methods of inferring and looking up the dictionaries. The emphasis will be put back on how to memorize vocabularies directly and efficiently. Categorization is one of cognitive activities and it is also a cognitive regularity. Applying the category theory to vocabulary memorization can facilitate our memory. First, the process of categorization is the process of facilitating memorization. Second, different items of a word are linked by family resemblance, which is the cognitive basis and regularity of polysemy. After we memorize the basic or core meaning of a word, we can memorize the other meanings more easily with the use of this cognitive regularity.Based on the results of this investigation, the author recommends some implications: (1) basic level words should be learnt first ; (2) vocabularies should be memorized through their internal relatedness, and (3) the students should be guided by the teachers and receive strategy training. In sum, the final mastery of a word does not rely on the teacher's instruction in class, but on students themselves as long as they actively and autonomously learn words and apply memorization strategies comprehensively. Only in this way can they memorize words effectively and efficiently and go out of the plight of vocabulary memorization.