| English vocabulary learning is of great importance for Second Language Acquisition and the way of presenting words is significant for students to learn new words.However,the importance of vocabulary teaching in China is largely neglected.Students acquire new English words mainly by doing pattern drill exercise and reading and writing English words repeatedly,which is low in efficiency and detrimental to their English learning.Most students rely heavily on the textbook Word List to memorize English words.Some students spend much time on rote memorization while still having a poor understanding of English words.In view of this,the issue of English vocabulary teaching should be prioritized in English language teaching.The presentation of vocabulary is an integral part of vocabulary teaching in second language acquisition(Nation,2000).Therefore,this research seeks to examine the presentation of English vocabulary in junior high school textbook to find out 1)whether it provides students with a meaningful context that fits the pattern of the human mind that is conducive to students' English vocabulary learning;2)How students make use of the Word List and what is their opinions about the advantages and disadvantages when using it;and 3)what we can do to improve it and make it better facilitate students'English language understanding and learning.This study is based on Frame Semantics Theory,and take the first volume of the Grade Eight English textbook as an example.In order to answer the aforementioned questions,this research employs a combination of multiple methods.First of all,we adapt the non-exhaustive example method to have a close examination of the English vocabulary list in the first volume of Grade Eight English textbook.In addition,questionnaires are distributed among 135 Grade-Eight students,and their opinions toward the Word List in their textbook are collected to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the Word List.Furthermore,SPSS is used to analyze the correlation between the time the students spent on the Word list and their English scores.We find that the arrangement of English words in the textbook Word List is problematic and not effective in helping students learn new English words.English new words are simply gathered together in each unit with their Chinese counterparts and attached in the appendix in the textbook according to their sequential order appearing in previous texts or alphabetical order.Plus,English words are randomly listed regardless of the semantic relation among them and words that share the same semantic frame are separated.In fact,students indicate that accumulating enough English words and expressions is one of the biggest obstacles in their English learning.Furthermore,SPSS analysis indicates that the correlation between the time students spent on the Word list and their English scores is not statistically significant.We believe that,based on the theory of Frame Semantics,an appropriate rearrangement of new words in the English textbook is necessary to fit the student's cognition,which means providing a meaningful frame for students to understand English words more efficiently,hence achieving greater cognitive ef-fects while using less cognitive efforts.Therefore,a cognitive approach is applied to rearrange the glossary attached to the first volume of Grade Eight Engli.sh text'book.After that,a controlled experiment is conducted to test the efficiency of the rearranged Word List in helping students to acquire the English words and expressions in their textbook.The result shows that compared with the current Word List in the textbook,the new cognitive Word List is more effective tool and more convenient for students to understand the semantic meaning of English words and thus better facilitating their English learning.Furthermore,this research sheds light on future research directions that the theories of Cognitive Linguistics can be applied to provide guidelines in the textbook compilation and to facilitate the student's second language acquisition in China. |
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