A Study On Word-web Association Of Target English Vocabulary At A Vocational College

Neurocognitive linguistics is based on the man-made Neural Networks or the cognitive Connectionist Model and the neural web thought of connectionism, which initiated in the 1960's and boomed in the 1980s. The theory was started by Sydney Lamb, one of the American linguists of the century. He has called his theory neurocognitive linguistics and throws more light on the fact that neurocognitve theory is always consistent with the physiological human brain and the latest findings into it. In 2001, Cheng Qilong firstly introduced the new theory into China. Since then, more and more theoretical studies and views on the theory in China have come out.The author found the research problem at a vocational college by the means of interviewing, questionnaire and analyzing their two term examination papers, as a result of which, the findings indicate that the students' lack of vocabulary, especially of their active vocabulary is one of the most critical problems which prevent them from improving their English development.It is true that vocabulary teaching has a long history but the previous cognitive vocabulary teaching strategies such as repetition, word formation analysis, context categories, association, story telling and other means of brain maps, schemata etc. are not as poly dimensioned and connective as neurocognitive linguistic approaches because those strategies or some of the combinations of the strategies only mean part of the sections of the neurocognitive linguistic word-web theory. The application of the theory to this research on the target vocabulary teaching at the vocational college has been the first attempt to find out whether it has good effect on vocational college students' active vocabulary development.This paper consists of 5 parts. The first part starts with a brief introduction to the purpose and significance of researches into vocabulary teaching at the vocational college. The second part reviews the current research of neurocognitive linguistic theory and those of the cognitive and connectionist methods both at home and abroad. The third part presents the theory foundations of this research: connectionist theory and cognitive linguistics, which are a combination of the science of the brain,cognitive linguistics, artificial intelligence, connectionism and philosaphy. However, the focus is on how the neurocognitive linguistic word-web is developed from the cognitive linguistics and connectionist artificial networks. In the fourth part, the paper first advances the general model of the neurocognitive linguistic word-webs and the testing definitions adopted in the teaching experiment followed by their correlations from neurocognitive linguistic theory to the subsequent experimental design and implementation. When conducting every procedure, the researcher and all the subjects in the experimental class follow the vocabulary teaching method of neurocognitive linguistic word-webs for the target new and key English vocabulary at a vocational college.The data analysis in this chapter falls into four steps.The fifth part is dicussion and conclusion,which involves analyzing the overall research processes, new findings, discussing more questions emerging during the course of the implementation and finally putting forword some further suggestions.The data analysis and results have shown that the experimental class gets good results:(1) The nerocognitive linguistic method can actually facilitate the students' active vocabulary development.(2)Subjects' performances on active vocabulary development in experimental class are better at their performances on multiple choices, derivation, associative vocabulary.The fact indicates the vocabulary teaching method of neurocognitive linguistic word webs is more helpful in active vocabulary development.