A Study Of College English Vocabulary Learning Based On Connectionism

As a core part of learning, vocabulary acquisition takes place throughout thecourse of English learning. The College English Curriculum Requirements of2007clearly stipulates that vocabulary teaching is one of the crucial components ofEnglish teaching, and teachers should teach students the knowledge of Englishvocabulary in stages. Therefore, vocabulary learning deserves more attention fromcollege students and teachers. However, traditional vocabulary learning method maybe not a very effective way to help students to get a better understanding of Englishvocabulary and memorize them effectively. It still have some difficult in memorizingthe spelling or the meaning of words and distinguishing similar words for a part ofstudents. How to learn vocabulary efficiently has been an urgent problem confrontedby college students and teachers.Connectionism belongs to the field of cognitive psychology. It is also known asartificial neural network or parallel distributed processing model. Connectionismlearning view has two main ideas. First, connectionism highlights distributedrepresentation. Connectionism believes that knowledge is not stored in any specificunit or weight but in the whole network with the interactive relations. Second,connectionist learning theory is that learners obtain knowledge through establishing,adjusting, and learning the relationship between the units which can be finished bychanging their weights. Therefore, previous learning experience can affect thesubsequent input. And it also can say that associative memory is an important featureof connectionist memory theory. On the basis of connectionism, words can connectwith each other and construct the vocabulary network, including morphologicalnetwork and semantic network, in which word formation and sense relation aretreated as the known information as well as the connection weights between words.Based on connectionism theory, this vocabulary learning method seems to helpcollege students to learn English vocabulary more effectively.This thesis attempts to investigate the application and the learning effect of thevocabulary network based on connectionism to college English vocabulary learning,and explore an effective way of learning to improve college students English vocabulary level. The researcher chooses113non-English major students from twonatural classes of Chengdu University of Technology as the subjects of the empiricalstudy. References analyzing, questionnaire survey method and test method are usedto collect resources and data which are analyzed by SPSS software (Version20.0),focusing on the study of the following questions:(1) Is there any difference betweenhigher level and lower level student in the frequency of vocabulary network usebased on connectionism in vocabulary learning?(2) What factor may influence thevocabulary network use?(3) Can vocabulary network based on connectionism inEnglish vocabulary learning effectively improve college students Englishvocabulary level? The results show that, firstly, learners of higher English levelsapply the vocabulary network more frequently to English vocabulary learning. Theresult indicates that the college students who have different English levels differ inthe degree of application of the vocabulary network. Secondly, College students beliefs about English vocabulary learning have some effect on the application of thevocabulary network based on connectionism. Thirdly, there is a positive correlationbetween the degree of application of the vocabulary network and students Englishvocabulary level. It proves that to some degree, the method of building thevocabulary network has a good effect on improving college students Englishvocabulary level.