A Categorization-based Empirical Study On English Nominal Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

Vocabulary is an important part of languages, playing a pivotal role in the process of language teaching and learning. The size of the vocabulary largely reflects a foreign language learners’ability of the foreign language. Nominal vocabulary occupies a large proportion in the process of English vocabulary acquisition. Therefore, it is an important topic worth of research on what effective vocabulary teaching methods can be used to help students master a large number of nominal words, make students keep a long period retention, as well as improve the students’ listening, speaking, reading and writing skills.Grade10is a transitional period from junior high school to senior high school, in which the knowledge structure and learning method of the students are changing. Thus, it is an important stage of English words accumulation. The cognitive ability of students at this stage has developed comparatively mature, achieving the best memory standard, and the stability of the attention is close to adult, which makes them occupy the memory of items freely. Inspired by this, the author applies the theory of categorization of cognitive linguistics to the senior high school vocabulary teaching, and makes an empirical study on the effects of the teaching methods based on the two theories of categorization, aiming to give some suggestions on developing a set of feasible nominal vocabulary teaching methods.In this thesis, the author spent15weeks doing an experiment on English vocabulary teaching in Nankai Senior High School using the prototype theory of categorization and the theory of levels of categorization as the theoretical basis. Class11is the control class while Class12is the experimental class. Class11used the traditional method, and Class12was taught nominal vocabulary chiefly by the theories of categorization. Before the experiment, all the subjects took part in the interview, questionnaire, and pre-test. After fifteen weeks’ contrasting teaching, they made the two post tests and interview. By analyzing the statistics, there is a great difference between the nominal vocabulary acquisition, which means the teaching methods based on the two theories of categorization can be well applied in the vocabulary teaching and learning. In addition, it is of great help to lead to the interests of students in vocabulary learning.