An Empirical Study Of English Subjunctive Mood Teaching From Cognitive Linguistic Perspective

As one of the three language modes in English,subjunctive mood has no counterpartconcept in Chinese.In addition,the verb forms of the subjunctive mood are very complex,therefore,in the process of grammar teaching,subjunctive mood is always a difficult language point.In the traditional way of grammar teaching,language instructors invariably explain the semantic meanings of subjunctive mood by listing sentences,summarizing grammar rules,and doing exercises.In general,traditionalmethods are often time-consuming and laborious,although they have their advantages.They do not solve the problem of learners’ mechanical memory,and the learners’ burden of learning is still heavy.Therefore,how to help language learners understand and memorizesubjunctive mood betterhas become one of the significant issues that cognitive linguists are concerned about.A large number of current researchesinterpret subjunctive mood from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics.However,the experimental research on subjunctive mood is relatively insufficient.Thus,this thesis makes an empirical study on English subjunctive mood teaching from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics.Two research questions are:(1)Is the Cognitive Linguisticsapproach more effective than the traditional teaching method in teaching English subjunctive mood?(2)In the aspect of long-term memory,does the experimental grouptaught with theCognitive Linguistic approach outperform the controlled group taught with the traditional teaching method?The subjects are English majors of a university which are divided into experimental group and controlled group,and the two groups adopt the Cognitive Linguistic approach and the traditional teaching method respectively.The process of teaching experiment contains three tests: pretest,immediate post-test and delayed post-test.The results show that: there is no significant difference between the Cognitive Linguistic approach and the traditional teaching method in teaching subjunctive mood,however,in the long-term memory,the experimental group taught with the Cognitive Linguistic approach is better than the controlled group taught with the traditional method.The implications of the research are: Cognitive Linguistic theories can help language learners understand and memorize grammar better and longer.During the teaching process,language instructors should properly make use of Cognitive Linguistic theories to help language learners understand and master the grammar knowledge better,and improve the teaching efficiency.