Theories On Vocabulary Teaching And Learning And Their Application In High School English Teaching In China

Vocabulary is the very foundation of learning a foreign language. A learner's vocabulary capacity will certainly affect his development of language proficiency. Vocabulary could be "a lion in the way" in the English teaching and learning process. So we English teachers should try to find effective teaching and learning strategies to reduce the learning difficulties and effectively enlarge the learners' vocabulary.With this as the purpose, this paper intends to discuss English vocabulary learning strategies, analyze the vocabulary acquisition processes, and suggest more effective ways to teach and learn the English vocabulary. To do this, I first introduce some theories that have resulted from the development of applied linguistics, in which have been found many studies on vocabulary teaching and learning, including the emphasis on the importance of learning strategies. I then discuss the cognitive approach to the study of language, particularly the study of metaphor, and connect the discoveries to vocabulary teaching and learning in China's high schools. By drawing the discoveries from my own experiment on vocabulary leaning, I propose that teaching and learning English vocabulary by using the cognitive theories on metaphor as a strategy can arouse high school learners' interest and can therefore enlarge the their vocabulary more effectively.