A Study On Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School Based On Prototype Category Theory

Language plays a very important role in people’s lives. Vocabulary as a basic component of language, its function can not be neglected. Without grammar we can express a lot of things, but without vocabulary we can express nothing. In recent years, with the blooming of cognitive linguistics, people have done a lot of researches on vocabulary teaching from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Whereas, the current situation of English vocabulary teaching in high school is not satisfactory. It is right for teachers to pay attention to vocabulary teaching. But their teaching methods are not perfect. Thus high school English vocabulary teaching is struggling. In order to change the current situation of English vocabulary teaching in high school and make vocabulary teaching realize its goals, so it is important to make a further research on vocabulary teaching from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. This thesis will apply prototype category theory to vocabulary teaching, and find its influence on vocabulary teaching.This experiment chose two parallel classes from Grade One in a high school. One class is control class and the other class is experimental class. Before experiment, the author did questionnaire and pre-test to make sure that there is no significant difference between these two classes. During the process, in control class, teacher applied traditional teaching method, while in experimental class, teacher used the teaching method based on prototype category theory. After a 15-week experiment, the conclusion expresses that scores of students in experimental class are higher than those of control class, so we can say the teaching method based on prototype category theory is better than traditional teaching method.The thesis is composed of five sections. Chapter one is introduction. In this part, researcher introduces research background and purpose, research significance and the layout of the thesis. Chapter two is literature review. It mainly illustrates category theory, prototype theory and their developments, basic-level theory and the vocabulary teaching situation at home and abroad. Chapter three introduces research design in detail; it provides research hypothesis and questions, the procedure of research; research subjects and teaching material. The experiment includes questionnaire, pre-test, post test and interview. Chapter four introduces the results of experiment and makes data analysis and discussion. Chapter five is conclusion. The major findings, implications and limitations are listed in this part.