On Application Of Category Theory To English Vocabulary Teaching In Vocational Colleges

Being one of three elements which constitute language and basis of various language skills,vocabulary plays the important role in the process of language learning and teaching. For mostEnglish learners, nothing is more difficult to overcome than words. Shortage of vocabularyseverely limits their skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation as well as theircommunicative competence. It is in particular for the vocational college students. Due to the factthat they are in a weak English basis and less vocabulary have been accumulated when enrolling, itis hard for them to make progress in English. How to help the vocational college students constructtheir vocabulary knowledge, develop their lexical competence and therefore improve their Englishapplication ability is the problem puzzling enough for most vocational college teachers.Prototype category theory and basic-level category theory are two fundamental theories ofcognitive linguistics, which give more supportable explanation in vocabulary teaching and learning.According to these theories, during the course of vocabulary teaching and learning, muchimportance should be attached to the basic level vocabulary, semantic relations of words, and thecognitive motivation of semantic extension by means of general cognitive principles such asmetaphor and metonymy with the aim of forming semantic networks in the mind of learners inorder to release them from heavy burden of memorizing so large amount of vocabulary. Therefore,in the recent years, more and more researchers and teachers at home or abroad have paid moreattention to the combination category theory with the language teaching theoretically andpractically. The author of this thesis attempts to introduce category theory into the Englishclassroom of vocational colleges and proposes three hypotheses:1) The vocabulary teachingguided by category theory can help students acquire English vocabulary efficiently.2) Thevocabulary teaching guided by category theory can help learners improve their comprehensiveEnglish level.3) The vocabulary teaching guided by category theory can arouse learners’ interestin English learning and therefore develop their vocabulary learning autonomy.The author started with an investigation about the current situation of English vocabularyteaching and learning in Jining vocational colleges with questionnaires, reflected the problemsoccurring in the process of vocabulary teaching and learning respectively and came to theconclusions. Then, the author took101students of grade2010majoring in English for Business assubjects, divided them into experimental class and controlled class and implemented a comparativeexperiment in order to testify whether the vocabulary teaching guided by category theory couldhelp students facilitate their vocabulary learning and therefore improve their comprehensiveEnglish level, whether it had more positive impact on arousing learners’ interest and furtherdeveloping their vocabulary learning autonomy in the experimental class compared with that in the controlled class. With the help of SPSS17.0, the author analyzed the collected data of pre-tests andpost-tests about vocabulary and comprehensive English level from two classes. Results revealedthat the performance of both vocabulary and comprehensive English level from two classes hadbeen developed after one semester English studying. But the progress in EC was more obviouslythan that in CC. When comparing the post-test results of EC with that of its pre-test and with thepost-test results of CC, it was found that there was significant difference from the perspective ofstatistics. In addition, the author carried out a post experiment questionnaire survey in the twoclasses using the autonomous learning scale compiled for vocational college students. The resultsindicated that there was obvious difference between two classes. The students in EC study Englishvocabulary much more independently.It is found that the vocabulary teaching method guided by category theory can help studentsacquire vocabulary efficiently and therefore improve their comprehensive English level; it haspositive effect on arousing learners’ enthusiasm to learn English and further develop their Englishvocabulary learning autonomy.