An Experimental Study Of English Vocabulary Teaching In Junior Middle Schools With The Perspective Of Prototype Theory

English Curriculum Standard stipulates the requirement of the junior middle schools students that when they graduate, students shall learn how to use about2000words and idioms and phrases. But, vocabulary is thought to be the most difficult item to learn in junior middle schools’English. Most students complain that they have spent lots of time to memorize and learn words but forget them quickly. In order to solve the problems of vocabulary teaching in the classroom, scholars and English teachers at home and abroad have raised different vocabulary teaching approaches based on English teaching approaches such as Grammar-Translation Approach, Direct Approach, Audiolingual Approach, and Communicative Approach. However, these approaches do not tackle lexical problems effectively in vocabulary teaching.In recent years, with the development of linguistics, linguists begin to pay attention to the studies of applying linguistic theories to language teaching, and prototype theory is the focus of their attention. At present, there have been quite a few of researches on the application of prototype theory to English teaching, especially to vocabulary teaching. However, most of them are theoretical researches on polysemy teaching in colleges, little has been done for empirical inquiry in in middle schools, not to mention junior middle schools. This thesis aims to testify the the efficacy of English vocabulary teaching in junior middle schools with the perspective of prototype theory and answer two research questions:1. Can vocabulary teaching based on prototype theory promote students’lexical competence?2. In what aspects can lexical competence be promoted?Two classes from the eighth grade of in North Town Middle School of Jiexi county in Guangdong province are chosen as subjects who are randomly designated as experimental group and control group. The vocabulary teaching approach conducted under the prototype theory is applied to the experimental group while traditional approach to the control group in the one-term experiment. The instrument used in this experiment are tests. Based on the scores of students’ final examination, receptive knowledge of vocabulary, productive knowledge of vocabulary and depth knowledge of vocabulary, Independent and Paired Sample T-test are conducted to test whether there exist significant difference in their overall English proficiency and lexical competence before and after the experiment. Results show that students share similar comprehensive English proficiency and lexical competence before the experiment. However, the post-test analysis results show that there exists significant difference. The experimental group’s lexical competence are higher than that of the control group, which indicates that the application of prototype theory to vocabulary teaching can contribute more to lexical competence than traditional approach.In a word, vocabulary teaching approach with the perspective of prototype theory is feasible and effective in improving students’ lexical competence.