On Constructing Semantic Network In Teaching English Vocabulary In High Schools

Words are the building blocks of a language. For a language, vocabulary is as significant as cells for the human body. As for language learners, the vocabulary size is of vital importance, because a large vocabulary has a positive correlation with all aspects of language use. However, "As for students, the greatest difficulty in foreign language study lies in how to learn and master vocabulary" (Wang Rongpei,2000:25), and the survey of 199 students in the author's school and another school also verifies that. What's more, although we have begun to attach importance to vocabulary teaching in the late thirty years, we merely focus on vocabulary accumulation, while ignoring the dynamic and networked development of vocabulary, which makes it almost impossible for a high school student to memorize and master 3800 words and expressions required in the new curriculum. Therefore, it's vital to carry out a research on reasonable and effective vocabulary teaching.Cognitive psychology concerns the cognitive process of thought, ranging over concept, thought, memory, perception and presentation, which is closely related with vocabulary acquisition. In the sight of cognitive psychology, knowledge is stored in the human brain in the form of networks and vocabulary learning is the connection between the new knowledge and the prior one. Based on the analysis of the important theories of cognitive psychology and the theories of semantics, namely, Semantic Field Theory (SFT), the thesis suggests that it is feasible to construct a semantic network in high school English vocabulary instruction.While participating in the subject study of On the Effective English Vocabulary Teaching in High School, the present author collected and read the relevant literature at home and abroad. Based on the study of the requirements in the new curriculum standards claim on High School English vocabulary and the analysis of the questionnaire survey involving 199 students and 30 English teachers in the author's school and another school, the author suggests constructing semantic network in high school English vocabulary teaching, and divide it into two levels:the text-based level and the topic-relevant level. The present author made a questionnaire survey and compared results of the pretest and the posttest before summing up one-semester experiment. The result of the experiment verifies the four hypothesizes:1) the semantic network approach can develop students' interest in vocabulary learning and slow down memory loss; 2) the semantic network approach can enlarge students'vocabulary effectively; 3) the semantic network approach can improve efficiency of vocabulary teaching; 4) the semantic network approach based on the text can promote students'understanding of the text. What's more, by means of the interaction between the semantic network and the context network, students are enabled to learn vocabulary and understand the developing trend in semantics and the rules for generating new meanings of words and therefore improve their language ability and communication ability.