A Cognitive Approach To The Conditional Sentence In English And Its Teaching In Senior Middle Schools

Cognitive linguistics holds the belief that there is a close relation between language and cognition:many grammatical principles are actually projected from the rules in reality through human beings cognition. Every human language has a method of forming the conditional sentence, as conditional sentences reflect human capacity to perceive the logical relationship between different events in the objective world. By means of researching into the conditional sentence, the thesis has revealed the relationship between the conditional sentence and human cognition, and investigated the cognitive approach to the teaching of the conditional sentence in senior middle schools.By applying the fundamental viewpoints of cognitive linguistics to the study of the English conditional sentence, the thesis has researched into the corresponding relationship between the meaning and the form of the conditional sentence and discovered the cognitive characteristics of the conditional sentence. On the basis of the study, the thesis points out that from the cognitive perspective, the concept of condition results from people's cognition of the relationship between the condition event and the result event in the objective world, the concept of real condition resulting from the cognition of the relationship between the real condition event and the real result event, and the concept of unreal condition from the cognition of the relationship between the unreal condition event and the unreal result event. The conditional sentence is the linguistic representation of the concept of condition. When these two kinds of condition are linguistically represented, real conditional sentences and unreal conditional sentences come into existence in language.The cognitive approach to language teaching is to teach a language in accordance with the laws of cognition. The laws of cognition in English teaching include the subjective laws of cognition of the students in learning English and the objective laws of cognition behind English itself. The knowledge of English is objectified as the knowledge of form, the knowledge of meaning and the knowledge of use of the language. Therefore, the final goal of the cognitive approach to English teaching is to help the students to very well cognize and grasp the knowledge of form, the knowledge of meaning and the knowledge of use of the language in accordance with the laws of cognition.The cognitive approach to the teaching of the conditional sentence is meaning-centered. It probes into the decisive influence of the meaning of the conditional sentence on the formation of the form so that students master the form, the meaning and the use of the conditional sentence in accordance with the cognitive law behind it. Under the guidance of constructivism, students can construct the concept of the real and unreal condition by activating their previous knowledge, comparing and summarizing the conditional sentence in accordance with the laws of cognition. It is proved by the teaching experiment that the cognitive approach to the teaching of the conditional sentence is effective in assisting the students in quickening their pace of acquiring the form, meaning and use of the conditional sentence.This thesis has probed into the cognitive characteristics of the conditional sentence in English and the teaching of the conditional sentence in English from the cognitive perspective in senior middle schools. It is expected that the study will provide significant reference for the study of similar linguistic phenomena and their teaching.