An Empirical Study On Applying Frame Semantics To Junior College English Vocabulary Teaching

As vocabulary is the cornerstone of the language, vocabulary learning is one of the mostbasic, the most fundamental factors to acquisition of any language. In recent years, to China’sEnglish teaching practice, though students and teachers have invested a lot of time and effortin terms of learning and teaching processes, the effect was still poor. We have to admit thatthe vocabulary teaching is the primary obstacle to overcome. The only way to solve thisproblem is to break teachers’ rigidified teaching concepts, by introducing new ideas and newmethods to facilitate the vocabulary teaching to a new stage.This paper tried to apply the theory of Frame Semantics into English vocabularyteaching, based on which a teaching model was designed. In order to test the feasibility of thismodel, the author has conducted an experiment. The experimental process included threeparts, the pre-tests, the experiment and the post-tests. The pre-tests were designed to testwhether participants’ English language proficiency and vocabulary level from theexperimental classes and control classes of are the same or not. During the whole procedure,experimental classes and control classes were taught the same target English vocabularyseparately by the vocabulary teaching methods based on the theory of Frame Semantics andthe traditional vocabulary teaching methods. The post-tests compared and analyzed datawhich was obtained on vocabulary storing and maintaining capacity. SPSS19.0statisticalsoftware was adopted in the process of data analysis to ensure results’ accuracy andcredibility.According to the experiment, we got the following results:1) The vocabulary teaching methods based on the theory of Frame Semantics has morepositive effect than the traditional vocabulary teaching methods in terms ofvocabulary storing.2) The vocabulary teaching methods based on the theory of Frame Semantics has morepositive effect than the traditional vocabulary teaching methods on vocabularymaintaining.From the experimental results, we can conclude that in both vocabulary storing stage andvocabulary maintaining phase, the vocabulary teaching methods based on the theory of FrameSemantics is more effective than traditional teaching methods.On the basis of the findings, some pedagogical revelations can be listed as follows:First of all, the teachers should have a deep understanding of Frame Semantics and makeflexible use of it into teaching practice, to stimulate students’ interest in using frame networkto improve their vocabulary learning.Second, teachers should go from the easy to the difficult and complicated, step by step,by exerting a combination of a variety of teaching strategies, trying to turn the Englishvocabulary learning simpler and simpler. Last but not least, students should realize the importance of the learning method basedon the theory of Frame Semantics, not only because it has the positive effect on Englishvocabulary leaning, but also yields a better way to accumulate encyclopedic knowledge aboutthe world.