A Case Study Of Teaching Simple Past Tense Based On Iconicity Of Language

Compared with arbitrariness,iconicity of language is another feature of language which reveals inevitable relations between language structure and human experience.Rationales and associations between the language form and its corresponding meanings are emphasized in iconicity theory.These rationales and associations come from human being?s experience and cognition.And they are an important part of the origin of language.So far,the studies on the iconicity of language have supplied plenty of typical examples and systematical theories.These studies help teachers explain grammar rules based on cognition.And these studies can also be useful to help language learners realize cognition principles underneath the language rules.If teachers can demonstrate the inherent connection between language traits with general rules and human being?s experience together with cognition,then learners may have a better and deeper understanding of language,and have their language competence and level of the target language improved.Recently,scholars home and abroad have not only studied iconicity in language and literature,but also have explored the application of iconicity to language teaching.In this thesis,the author does an empirical research about English language teaching based on the theory of language iconicity.The research aims to help students understand the concept of simple past tense with the new teaching method.The students involved are Grade Seven students at a junior middle school in Changzhou Jiangsu Province.Guided by the theory of iconicity,the teaching process has focused on how to explain the connection of the regular form of simple past tense suffix “-ed” and its reference meaning “the previous time,space,status,deeds or facts”;And then based on the relation between language form and language meaning,the teacher explained other basic usages of simple past tense.The author hopes to prove that the teaching theories and the corresponding teaching methods based on iconicity can improve students? understanding of the language phenomena and rules.The author conducted quizzes for before and after the experimental teaching of one month both in the experimental class and in the controlled class.In this thesis,the author reported the students? scores and then analyzed the changing of students? understanding about the concept of simple past tense upon the performance variation between two classes.Based on the result of this research,the author tries to seek the suggestion about a teaching method from the perspective of language iconicity.Also the author hopes the language teachers can get some inspiration about how to convey language rules more efficiently and about how to improve students? language understanding and language competence.