Lexical Iconicity And Vocabulary Teaching And Learning In Middle School

Vocabulary is one of the three elements (phonetics, vocabulary, grammar) of a language. It is the basic material of a language. The famous linguist Willinks once said: Without grammar, very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed. It plays an important part in language study. With the development of science and technology, there exists more and more cooperation among countries. English plays a vital role in communication. English teachers should teach vocabulary with the theory of iconicity, which helps the students to understand the vocabulary deeply and impressively. So they can master vocabulary more quickly and efficiently.For many years, the researchers in the west have devoted to the study of grammar. It was not until 1980s that they turned to the study of vocabulary and got some useful conclusion. In China, researchers pay more attention to college students (major or non-major in English). The more vocabulary students acquire at primary stage of English study, the more easily and faster students develop other aspects of English study in the future. However, the study on lexical iconicity is still in a low level.This thesis aims at exploring iconicity in vocabulary teaching and learning .The author conducts an experiment on her two natural classes from Weifang Yucai middle school. This experiment integrates iconicity theory into English teaching. The author adopts two instruments: one is classroom observation the other is test once a month. The subjects are at the same English level. They are assigned randomly to an experimental class and a control class. During the experimental period of about five months, the two classes are treated differently. For the experimental class, both linguistic knowledge and iconicity theory are emphasized. The author tries as many ways as possible to integrate iconicity theory into English teaching and encourage them to try their best to learn vocabulary by using the iconicity theory. The two classes'scores are different only after a month's study. And in the next three tests, there is also a great difference between the two classes. The score of the experimental class is not only higher than that of the control class, but also higher than that of the other four leveled classes .Especially in the terminal examination, the experimental class won the second in the whole Kuiwen district. This proves the importance and effectiveness of iconicity theory in vocabulary teaching and learning. There are also some limitations in this thesis: the first is that the students are young and they have only a little vocabulary accumulation. They can't absolutely accept the theory of iconicity and misuse it sometimes; the second is the number of the subjects is small and it can't present all the middle school students. What's more ,the score of the students not only depends on the teacher's teaching method, there are also many other factors which affect the students'score, such as the attitude of the students towards English, the organization of the head teacher, the study atmosphere of the whole class and so on.The author sincerely hopes that more people concern the theory of iconicity and more research can be done in this area.This thesis includes four chapters. The first chapter points out the importance of vocabulary in language, the classification of vocabulary, and a historical overview that trace back language and vocabulary teaching and learning.The second chapter is a historical overview of iconicity and arbitrariness and introduces the four principles of iconicity: Distance Iconicity, Sequencing Iconicity, Proximity Iconicity and Quantitative Iconicity.The third chapter introduces the instruments of research. One is classroom observation and the other is test. The research procedure includes two parts: Teaching vocabulary by using iconicity and learning vocabulary by using iconicity. Also this part presents the outcome of the experiment.The fourth chapter presents pedagogical implications.