A Study On The Application Of Category And Image Schematic Theories To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

In recent years, the studies on teaching English vocabulary strategies have been rapidly increasing. There is no doubt that some of these strategies are quite effective. It is known to all, learning methods often were influenced by the related theories and schools. The paper mainly based on category theory and image schematic theory, combined with Langacker’s cognitive grammar theory, which mainly put forth to apply theses theories in senior high school vocabulary teaching. Category theory mainly focuses on applying prototype category theory in high school vocabulary teaching, besides, Langacker’s cognitive grammar explained many aspects about English learning and teaching, and some related studies were also fruitful. These theories are all generated from the cognitive grammar theory. The cognitive grammar theory placed emphasis on vocabulary teaching combines with semantic fields and networks, which lighten students’ burden in memorizing English words. In aspect of cognitive grammar, this paper analyses the category theory and image schematic theory as well as some vocabulary learning views from Langacker, and then the author summarized the vocabulary learning strategies based on these theories. The paper aims at testing and verifying the validity of these theories.The study hangs experimental and control groups pre-post test design. The vocabulary learning strategy training lasts from September to November in Linxia Dongxiang County in 2014, and the teaching experiment chooses 60 students from grade 2. Before the training, the 60 students was tested by questionnaire and vocabulary test. After three months’training, the author provided the same questionnaire as before and test paper that was as difficulty as the first time offered, from which the author found that the score was much better than before. The training mainly focused on teaching the vocabulary learning strategies that category and image schema theories advocated, and these strategies are:word collocation and word formation, word association, and prototype-schema. The first two strategies are based on category and image schematic theories, but Langacker’s point of view on vocabulary embodied these three strategies. The third one reflects Langacker’s unique view.The study is an application study and the research questions of this paper are:(1) Can the category theory improve students’ vocabulary learning strategies? (2) Can image schematic theory enlarge students’ vocabulary size? (3) Can Langacker’s cognitive grammar view improve students’vocabulary learning awareness?After three months’ teaching practice, the author found that the vocabulary teaching strategies could help students on enlarging their vocabulary size and knowing vocabulary strategies well. Furthermore, learning these strategies can improve students’ interest on vocabulary and construct the vocabulary network in their brain, which finally developed their language communication skill. Meanwhile, the author hopes that this teaching experiment can offer reference and help to senior high school students and teachers on English learning and teaching in the further.