A Study Of English Vocabulary Teaching In Junior Middle School From The Perspective Of Categorization Theory

As one of the three vital parts of language, vocabulary is the basis of language acquisition. Adequate vocabulary is necessary for people to express their ideas and communicate with others. For language learners, inadequate vocabulary has a negative impact on listening, speaking, reading, writing, translating and so on, at the same time, it will also affect the development of communicative competence. How to enlarge language learners’ vocabulary size has been a big obstacle in English teaching and learning.To survey the current situation of English vocabulary learning in Grade 8 in No. 2 Middle School Attached to Qinghai Normal University, the author issued 124 pieces of questionnaires to students and interviewed 10 students randomly. Through the questionnaire and interview, the author found some problems in English vocabulary learning. For instance, the importance of vocabulary isn’t paid enough attention and vocabulary learning is considered as a time-consuming and inefficient activity. With the development of cognitive linguistics, more and more scholars pay attention to categorization theory, especially the prototype theory and the theory of levels of categorization. From the perspective of categorization theory, combining the problems existing in English vocabulary learning in middle school with middle school students’ cognitive features, such as continuous development of cognitive ability, the continual improvement of abstract thinking and the increasing richness of imagination, the author managed to apply the categorization theory into English vocabulary teaching. What is important, the author puts forward three hypotheses: First, the prototype theory can deepen learners’ word knowledge and enrich their language output; second, the theory of levels of categorization can enlarge learners’ vocabulary size; third, vocabulary teaching method guided by categorization theory can improve learners’ comprehensive English level.The author conducted a teaching experiment in Class 2 and treated Class 3 as the control class. The ultimate aim of the experiment is to testify the three hypotheses mentioned by the author. SPSS 19.0 is the main tool to analyze the results of comprehensive English tests and vocabulary tests. The pre-tests of the two classes are comparative, however, after the experiment, the difference of vocabulary size in the two classes is enlarged and the difference has statistical significance. Nevertheless, the improvement of comprehensive English level in experimental class doesn’t have statistical significance. Meanwhile, the author also analyzes the results from the diachronic perspective. The comprehensive English level and vocabulary size in experimental class are both improved significantly; however, the improvement of the two aspects in control class isn’t prominent.After the experiment, the author found categorization theory couldn’t exert a distinct influence on comprehensive English level in a short time. Whereas, the vocabulary teaching method guided by categorization theory could enlarge students’ vocabulary size and deepen students’ vocabulary knowledge. In the meantime, the author also concluded some findings. For example, for the polysemous words, the teacher can start from the prototypical meaning and then extent to the other marginal meanings by metaphor and metonymy to build a semantic network in students’ minds. Simultaneously, the teacher should pay more attention to the basic level category words and then extent to the superordinate or subordinate level category words in order to organize the words in a word tree in students’ minds. This method can reduce the memory load of students. In short, the vocabulary teaching method based on categorization theory plays a great part in students’ vocabulary acquisition.