A Study On The Application Of Prototype Category Theory To English Vocabulary Teaching In Junior High School

Vocabulary is an indispensable component of language learning.The vocabulary sizes that one master will have a direct effect on his language learning.In junior high school,most of the students view words as isolated and learn vocabulary by rote,and they are lack of effective vocabulary learning strategies.What is more,the teacher's vocabulary teaching method is inadequate.Therefore,new teaching methods should be explored to enrich students' vocabulary and improve their ability of vocabulary proficiency scientifically and effectively.The essay attempts to study the effect Prototype Category Theory on vocabulary teaching in junior high school.Prototype Category Theory holds that a word's prototypical meaning is regarded as its center,and other meanings are all extended around it,which strongly emphasizes the relationship between central meaning and peripheral meanings.Based on Prototype Category Theory,this paper aims to study the following three questions:1.Will the application of Prototype Category Theory to vocabulary teaching enrich students' vocabulary learning strategies?2.Will the application of Prototype Category Theory to vocabulary teaching facilitate students' retention of polysemy?3.Will the application of Prototype Category Theory to vocabulary teaching improve students' vocabulary proficiency?The experiment is conducted in Zhenjiang School of Dandong city within four months.Two classes of Grade Two participate in this experiment.One class is selected as experimental class(EC),and the other class is control class(CC).The 42 students in EC are taught English vocabulary based on Prototype Category Theory,while the 42 students in CC are taught by traditional teaching method.The study adopts questionnaire,tests and interview as research instruments,and all data collected from the experiment are analyzed by SPSS 19.0.The conclusions are as follows: the application of Prototype Category Theory to vocabulary teaching can enrich students' vocabulary learning strategies,especially the cognitive and social/affective strategies;this teaching method can facilitate students' retention of polysemy;and it can also improve students' vocabulary proficiency.Although this teaching method has some deficiencies and defects,it is a helpful approach to vocabulary teaching in junior high school.