A Study Of English Nominal Suffix Teaching-from The Perspective Of Prototype Theory

In academic circles, vocabulary has been an important content in the research ofsecond language acquisition (SLA) and foreign language teaching (FLT). It is wellknown that regarding English, affixes are the essential components for many words,so suffix learning has been regarded as one of the essential issues of enhancingvocabulary. An English nominal suffix is a bound morpheme that adds to the back of abase to form a nominal derivative word. Reviewing the studies which are related withsuffix, English suffix teaching has been emphasized by the English teaching circles,but many teachers are suffered from the fact that traditional teaching can not supplysufficient explanation for the practical application of suffixes, especially semanticitems of a suffix displayed during derivation. So the searching of effective teachingmethods for English suffix has become many English teachers’ urgent affairs.Cognitive linguistics is a new approach to the study of language which began toemerge in the1970s. As categorization theory in cognitive linguistics, prototypethoery is an important theory constructed on the basis of many anthropologists andpsychologists’ empirical studies such as Berlin，Kay, Rosch, Merives and Labov. Thecurrent thesis is a study of English nominal suffix teaching based on the theoreticalframework of prototype theory. The methodological route of this study is: to analyzethe relationship between the senses of English nominal suffix from the perspective ofprototype theory; to construct semantic network for English nominal suffix based onthe semantic prototype of English nominal suffix; and therefore to propose Englishnominal suffix teaching methods, and set forth some implications for Englishvocabulary teaching. The specific research question of current study is: Does theEnglish nominal suffix teaching in light of prototype theory show better effect thanthe traditional English nominal suffix teaching in non-English major students?In the current study, the research methods of integrated qualitative andquantitative analysis were applied:Firstly,20usual English nominal suffixes were selected by referring to the previous studies of suffix, and the relationship between the senses of them wasanalyzed in light of prototype theory, and the semantic networks for them wereconstructed.Secondly, based on the semantic network of English nominal suffix, anempirical study was administered to examine the effect of English nominal suffixteaching. The subjects of this empirical study are60participants from GuangzhouNanhua College of Industry and Commerce. They were from two classes of freshmen,each with30students, and were assigned arbitrarily to be experimental class andcontrol class. In the teaching experiment lasting for a semester, the knowledge of20usual suffixes was intended to teach in both classes. Between these two classes, onlythe teaching treatment was different. In the experimental class, English nominal suffixteaching from the perspective of prototype theory was adopted, while in the controlclass, the traditional teaching was adopted.Pre-test and post-test were formulated based on the application of20suffixes inderivative words. The pre-test was conducted in both classes before the teachingtreatment, and the post-test was conducted in both classes after the teaching treatment.The scores were collected respectively after the tests. Then they were compared andanalyzed by independent samples T-test in SPSS8.0.The result of pre-test showed that there’s no significant difference between theperformance of the two classes before teaching treatment. While the result of thepost-test showed that there’s significant difference between the performance of thetwo classes after teaching treatment. This answered the question: the English nominalsuffix teaching in light of prototype theory shows better effect than the traditionalEnglish nominal suffix teaching in non-English major students. The findings indicatedthe feasibility and advantage of prototype-based approach to English nominal suffixteaching.The result of current study elicited some pedagogical implications for Englishvocabulary teaching: Firstly, vocabulary shouldn’t be taught in isolation but in thesemantic network of words; Secondly, the analysis of senses of words should startfrom the typical meaning and extend to the less typical ones; Thirdly, the process of vocabulary teaching should be operated in a dynamic way.