A Study Of Teaching Strategy Of College English Vocabulary Under The Image Schema Theory

As is said and accepted in the academic circles, during the process of English language learning, grammar resembles reinforced concrete and vocabulary is compared to bricks and tiles, both of which play the vital roles in establishing the“English language building”. At this point, Just as linguist D.A. Wilkins(1972) said in Linguistics in Language Teaching “Without grammar very little can be conveyed;without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed.” From this point we can realize the vital role of vocabulary played in English learning. As the basis of language learning,vocabulary acquisition has been the key task for students and teachers and aroused wide concern. However, word learning is a rather long and painstaking process. It has bothered Chinese English learners all the time about how to memorize words efficiently. Due to the teaching plans, curriculum arrangement and other objective factors, teachers have to accomplish teaching tasks in the limited time and pay more attention to text teaching, doing exercise or listening training. The explanation of words is not as detailed as at high school. More traditional ways are used in vocabulary teaching. Students just follow the teacher to finish the teaching tasks in class and do exercise in the text after class. As for word memorizing, they have to spend a huge number of time keeping word meaning in mind by rote learning, reciting text, reading and writing words again and again. In addition, polysemy is common in English. But few strategies of polysemous memorization are imparted. So students are incapable of understanding the relationship among these semantic items of a same word and usually tend to memorize its lexical meanings respectively. Thus, in spite of the much effort and energy put in word memorizing, the final result proves to be unsatisfactory without effective and scientific methods. All of these problems in vocabulary learning have discouraged English learners, resulting in the poor performance in using English and scores in examinations due to the lack ofvocabulary.Due to the problems in vocabulary teaching above, a great number of scholars have done numerous researches about English vocabulary teaching strategies in recent years aiming at doing the exploration of effective methods to improve Chinese learners’ English proficiency. Some scholars like Liu Chuan and Yang Qingshan(1991) propose the method of componential analysis by Leech(1974) used in vocabulary teaching. In addition, the root and affix approach is still common in teaching today. Zhou Qilin and Zhang Nailing have published relevant articles to attach significance to the role of context and lots of reading played in vocabulary acquisition. Furthermore, Other researchers Feng Yuejing and Sun Mingyu(1999)analyze in theory and point out it that the corpus will do good to language learners to build the concept of word frequency. In modern English class, more traditional strategies are frequently employed, including rote learning, association, key word method, direct teaching, words categorization, composition approach, word chunk and schema memorization and so on. In spite of the ways in large number in English word teaching, fewer obviously effective teaching results have been achieved. Shortages still exist in traditional vocabulary teaching, which ignores the important part of cognitive factors. Honestly, traditional strategies can promote to some extent vocabulary acquisition; however, students have to spend too much more time and energy to keep words in mind, but the result is far from satisfying. And previous researches lack the verification of empirical study of the vocabulary teaching strategies’ validity. So, it is a long task for scholars and college teachers to constantly explore effective English vocabulary teaching strategies. In recent decades, a growing number of scholars and researchers at home and abroad have pointed out the difficulties college students are facing in second language acquisition and have done a lot of experiments and researches to seek more effective methods of lexical learning and teaching.With the deepening of linguistic development, it is a truly blessed event that cognitive linguistics has become a hot topic in recent years, which was considered to begin at the end of 1970 s. The philosophical basis for cognitive linguistics isembodied philosophy. It has to be mentioned first that the image schema is one of the most important concepts in cognitive linguistics field, which scientifically interprets the characteristics of human cognition. Language is the product of human’s cognition,and the image schema is the way both concept and language are formed, cognized and recognized. It is the foundation of thinking process and the precondition for categorization, concepts, senses, lexical meanings and relevant semantic items.Therefore, the image schema theory has been attached great attention to in English lexical teaching and learning, especially from the perspective of semantic formation and analysis. It can be more used to explore how polysemy is formed and maybe plays a positive part in promoting students’ English proficiency in polysemous acquisition.Polysemous cognition starts with the image, then schema, category, concept, and develops into the original meaning according to human beings’ body experience, and finally extends to the metaphor and metonymy meanings. When one concept is mapped to another concept, the image schema plays a vital role in the process of metaphor and metonymy. The image schema makes metaphor and metonymy possible.The converting rule among image schema, metaphor and metonymy is both the root of explanation of polysemy and the force of dynamic change of language. Therefore,it is natural that the image schema as a cognitive method is widespread in man’s mind and daily expression. With the metaphor and metonymy in mind based on image schema and concept, English language learners can be provided with a new and more logic direction and more sound motivation of vocabulary learning. On the basis of functions of image schema in formation, development, transformation of vocabulary and their meanings which are the truth of coming into being and connection of any language vocabulary, the theory of image schema together with other theories based on it may be applied into understanding, remembering, and teaching language learners to remember English vocabulary, and a more efficient method or model of teaching English vocabulary will be formed.On the background of the present difficulties students encounter in learning and the current teaching situation, in this thesis, author takes the students of two classesmajoring in architectonics in Jilin University of Architecture as participants and conducts an empirical experiment based on the image schema theory aiming at exploring its validity. 60 students in total of Jilin Architectural University are chosen and divided respectively into the experiment class taught in the trial teaching strategies under the image schema related theories to learn words and the control class following the traditional way. They are both experimented for 16 weeks. Supported by the leading- edge theories in cognitive linguistics and under the instruction of image schema related theories, the thesis uses questionnaire, pre-test and post-test on English vocabulary knowledge and the interview after experiment to prove the hypotheses. Computer program software SPSS19.0 is used for the analysis of collected data from questionnaire, pre-test and post-test, including mean value,sample T-Test, etc. The interview result is described and discussed from the perspective of qualitative research.This study aims to explore the three questions below:1. What is the current situation of English vocabulary teaching strategies applied by most of teachers to instruct Chinese college students and their feedbacks?2. What effect does image schema related theories applied in Chinese college English vocabulary teaching have on vocabulary teaching?3. What vocabulary teaching strategies or models based on the image schema theories can be obtained which are applied to improve college students’ English vocabulary acquisition?This thesis is composed of five parts:The first chapter gives a brief introduction about the whole thesis, giving a brief introduction to the background and purpose of the research, and the feasibility of the theoretical application to practice and the framework of the thesis.The second chapter is literature review. Firstly, it introduces the concept of image schema and the role of it in related category theories. And then, it draws a conclusion of the researches of vocabulary teaching strategies at home and abroad. The last part of this chapter shows the meaning of applying image schema theory to vocabulary teaching.The third chapter is mainly related to the methodology and the empirical research including research questions, hypotheses, participants, instruments, experimental procedure as well as the data collection and analysis. The questionnaire before testing,the two tests including pre-test and post-test, and the interview after experiment are all contained. And then, SPSS software is used for data analysis and discussion. Finally,experiment results are analyzed and the according summary is given, the results of which are based on the collected experimental data from questionnaires and pre-test and post-test through SPSS.The fourth chapter consists of discussion of findings, implications and limitations of the empirical research with a concise conclusion, and practical and feasible suggestions for the improvement of learners’ vocabulary learning strategies as well as English vocabulary teaching.The final part is to make a conclusion of the whole thesis.As the statistics and research findings show, first, most non-English majors know little about the effective vocabulary learning strategies, let alone the image schema theory. They usually tend to adopt more traditional approaches to recite words, such as rote learning, reciting one more time, root and affix method. In addition, relatively effective strategies for word learning are less taught in class only to result in students’ inefficiency and great difficulty in vocabulary memorization. Second, according to the result of pre-test, before the empirical study starts, no significant difference does exist between vocabulary knowledge and English proficiency of students in both experimental and control class. There is a significant difference in the application of the image schema related theories to the experimental class who are more likely to concern themselves with the formation and relationship among different semantic items of polysemous words from the perspective of image schema. In contrast,students in the control class just memorize words in traditional ways. Third, the interview to the experimental class reveals the positive and favorable attitude to a large extent among a large part of college students approving of the validity of such approach under the image schema theory for word learning. They suggest this method should be popularized to English vocabulary teaching. Last, the empirical study proves the positive role and feasibility of vocabulary teaching method by applying the image schema theory to college English vocabulary teaching practice.Based on the major findings, some implications have been shown to suggest for English vocabulary teaching and learning. As language is the unique way for human beings to cognize the outside world, this will be a new trail and exploration to apply the related cognitive linguistic theories to language teaching. The study proves that the image schema theory based on the embodied philosophy has a positive effect on English vocabulary teaching. Thus, college English teachers should attach attention to word teaching and positively explore and impart effective vocabulary strategies to cultivate the awareness of constantly using effective strategies for lexical learning and eventually enlarge vocabulary and enhance English proficiency.Actually, some implications have been provided for college English vocabulary teaching and learning, but some limitations in the present study still exist, such as the number and the range of the subjects is not big enough, the experimental time is still short and some subjective factors are also included. Therefore, larger and wider samples, longer experimental time, more relevant instruments are suggested for the future researches concerning vocabulary teaching strategies. It is sincerely hoped that more attention to this research on English vocabulary teaching strategies can be paid by scholars, researchers and college teachers so as to improve the college English vocabulary teaching quality and the vocabulary learning effect.