An Empirical Study Of English Vocabulary Teaching In High School From The Perspective Of Category Theories

Vocabulary is an element of language and semiotic system,which plays a consequential role in questing the essence of language. However, we find that most students are lack of effective learning strategies; most teachers still use traditional ways to teach vocabulary. Due to high school students have already formed the ability of cognition, category theories as the basis of cognitive linguistics, providing a new angle for vocabulary teaching and learning.Senior grade one is the transformation period of the knowledge structure and learning method, which is an important stage of English vocabulary accumulation. The researcher selects two classes of certain senior high school as subjects; the classes are divided into control and experimental classes. Traditional vocabulary teaching methods are adopted in the control class, namely paraphrase and associate with circumstances to understand the meaning of vocabulary. For experimental class, the researcher introduces category theories at first and then helps the students construct tree structure independently. Questionnaires, pre-test, post-test and interview are adopted as research instruments. The results show that with the guidance of category theory, students have expanded their vocabulary and improved their vocabulary efficiency; meanwhile, category theories help students enhance their vocabulary learning interest and confidence.