An Empirical Study On The English Vocabulary Teaching At Senior High School Based On Prototype Category Theory

Vocabulary,one of the three elements of language,is the backbone of a language system.In senior high school,the content of English teaching is increasingly richer,the vocabulary is greatly increased,and the meaning is becoming more and more complicated.While the vocabulary teaching method is still single,and lacking the guidance of the scientific theory.Therefore,how to help students acquire vocabulary quickly and effectively become a major subject for senior high school teachers.In this paper,the author takes the prototype category theory and second language acquisition theory as the theoretical basis.By helping students establish the concept of prototype category theory,the English teacher guides students first acquire basic words and their basic meaning,upon which guide them further pick up other non-basic words and their extended meanings.And then the teacher trains students' ability of word classification and imagination and analyzes the methods of applying this theory in vocabulary teaching.The aim of the paper is find out whether the application of prototype category theory can improve the efficiency of vocabulary teaching.Therefore,this paper aims to answer the following three questions:(1)Can the application of prototype category theory improve English vocabulary teaching efficiency in senior high school?(2)What kinds of changes does the application of the prototype category theory will bring in vocabulary teaching?(3)To what extent can the application of the the prototype category theory improve the vocabulary teaching efficiency?The research subjects of this experiment are students in two parallel classes in Dalian Jiankai high School.There are 82 research subjects altogether in two classes,40 in Class one(the control class)and 42 in Class two(the experimental class).The research started on September 1st and finished on December 30 th.The research instruments included questionnaires,tests and interviews.The experiment data will be analyzed by software SPSS19.0,which prove that the application of the prototype category theory can not only change the dull classroom atmosphere and activate students' interest in English teaching,but also improve learners' memorizing ability as well as their spelling accuracy and enlarge their vocabulary quantity.Then the vocabulary teaching efficiency can be improved.This paper mainly includes five parts.The first part is mainly concerns the background,purpose and significance of the study.Chapter two is literature review,which includes the related researches on vocabulary teaching with the guidance of prototype category theory at home and abroad.Chapter three is theoretical basis of this study.Chapter four is the methodologies,which mainly includes questionnaires,vocabulary tests,interviews and an experiment.And then the data analysis will also be carried out in this chapter.The last part is conclusion.It mainly concerns the main findings,the limitations and some suggestions.