An Application Of Mental Lexicon Theory To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

Human languages are based on vocabulary.The previous studies have shown that lexical error is the biggest obstacle to the second language communication.Therefore,the effectiveness of the second language's vocabulary teaching and the learner's ability to acquire vocabulary determines the success or failure of foreign language teaching.However,English vocabulary teaching is still in a subordinate position in most of senior high schools in China,and most of commonly-applied vocabulary teaching models neglect the significance of vocabulary and to certain degree,weakens the students' enthusiasm of learning English.In addition,with the increasing of requirements for the quantity and quality of English vocabulary in College Entrance Examination,vocabulary teaching is faced with more and more obstacles and challenges.In order to inspire enthusiasm and improve effectiveness of the students' vocabulary learning,from the perspective of cognitive psychology,this study attempts to take the Mental Lexicon Theory as the main theoretical support for the empirical research to explore effective ways of vocabulary teaching in senior high schools.Currently,most of the researchers have put forward some methods and suggestions to guide the practice of vocabulary teaching from theoretical analysis,but the research on the application of the theory and methods in practice is rare and the research on the actual application value of the theory is not clear.In addition,these researches mainly focus on college students and the related research on art students who have weak foundation in English seldom appears.Based on the Mental Lexicon Theory and related researches,the author attempts to propose a way to guide students to adopt the word association to create a pragmatic environment and then perform in the process of reviewing vocabulary,on the basis of which the author tries to explore a new model that combines with the methods which are to strengthen connection of vocabulary meaning and pronunciation,explain vocabulary in English,demonstrate semantic related vocabulary in the process of presenting vocabulary so as to improve the efficiency of vocabulary learning.Through the empirical research,the author hopes to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of this new vocabulary teaching model so as to to enhance the students' learning interest and improve the students' comprehensive language ability.The author adopts empirical research method and applies the new vocabulary teaching model in the experimental class.The teaching experiment lasts for four months.During the experiment,tests are given to evaluate the students' situation of vocabulary acquisition and comprehensive proficiency in two classes but their English learning interest,attitude,efficiency,difficulty and methods are investigated by questionnaire only in the experimental class before and after the experiment.All these tests and investigation are aimed to prove the following two research assumptions:(1)the new vocabulary teaching model based on the Mental Lexicon Theory can improve the students' English vocabulary memory ability and comprehensive proficiency;(2)the new vocabulary teaching model based on the Mental Lexicon Theory can improve the students' interest and autonomy in English vocabulary learning.After the experiment,the data are collected and statistically analyzed.To some extent,the results show positive.The feasibility and effectiveness of the Mental Lexicon Theory on the English vocabulary teaching and learning in senior high school are verified in theory and practice.In conclusion,the author puts forward some suggestions as creating the context,providing sufficient explosion to vocabulary and visualizing the vocabulary in the vocabulary teaching.All in all,although the results of this empirical research are not sufficient,it is expected to have some positive significance to the improvement of English vocabulary teaching effectiveness.