Chapter OneIntroduction
Vocabulary is regarded as a fundamental and essential element of a language. If alanguage is compared to a building, the grammar is the frame, while the vocabulary isthe building material, without which not a single building can ever be built.Hammer explains the importance of vocabulary in a vivid way, “if languagestructures make up the skeleton of language, then it is vocabulary that provides vitalorgans and the flesh” (43). Vocabulary learning is the basic task of language learning.And having a good command of vocabulary is the prerequisite of language proficiency.The extent and level of vocabulary may affect the listening, reading, speaking andwriting skills. D.A. Wilkins (19) also holds that, without Grammar, very little can beconveyed, and without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed. Therefore, vocabularyacquisition plays a significant role in language acquisition. However, teaching andlearning vocabulary is not an easy task. Research presents that the biggest obstacle inreading and listening for a foreign language is the vocabulary obstacle, and the mostfrequent errors made by foreign language learners are also vocabulary errors. BothEnglish teachers and students have realized the significance and difficulty in vocabularyteaching and learning, and made much effort to vocabulary teaching and learning.Memorization of English vocabulary seems to be the major activity among students.However, despite much effort has been made, vocabulary acquisition is still proven tobe a headache to both teachers and students.
According to Wallace (40), the most basickind of vocabulary learning problem is “the inability of learners to retrieve vocabularythat has been taught”. In other words, students usually remember the pronunciation andspelling of words which they have been taught, while they usually do not know how andwhere to use them exactly. This is to some degree due to the ignorance of students’cognitive characteristics in the process of traditional approaches to the Englishvocabulary teaching. linguistics, many new approaches have been introduced into China, such as, theSemantic Approach, the Corpus Approach, the Cognitive Approach and etc. Among theapproaches, the Cognitive Approach catches the most attention. Cognitive approach isan approach to foreign language teaching on the basis of the belief that languagelearning is a process which involves the active mental process. The cognitive approachcan date back to 1960s, but it is popularized these two decades with the rapiddevelopment of cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology. With the flourishing ofcognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, a lot of theories in the field of cognitivepsychology and cognitive linguistics have been applied to foreign language vocabularyteaching, such as the prototype theory, the schema theory, the conceptual metaphortheory, etc. Fillmore’s frame theory, proposed in 1980s, an important theoretical frameworkof cognitive linguistics claims that word meanings are best understood in reference tothe conceptual structures and the description of word meanings must start from theidentification of the conceptual structures which named frames. Frame theory gives asignificant direction to vocabulary teaching. Some scholars have realized the significantrole of frame theory can play in vocabulary understanding and have conducted somestudies on the application of frame theory into English vocabulary teaching. QianDeming & Zhou Qingfang (2005), Liu Na (2010), Li Jianming (2007), and Liu Lisheng(2009) have conducted some researches on the application of frame theory to Englishvocabulary teaching for college students. However, limited research has been done bothsystematically and practically. Besides, most of the limited research focus on theapplication of frame theory into English vocabulary teaching and least researchconcentrates on the application of frame theory to senior high school Englishvocabulary teaching.
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Chapter TwoThe Current Situation of English Vocabulary Learning andTeaching in Senior High Schools
2.1 The Vocabulary Requirements in Syllabus for Senior High School Students
In the field of English language teaching and learning, vocabulary is consideredas one of the fundamental components. As the foundation, vocabulary plays asignificant role in the process of language learning. Some activities of linguisticcommunication, such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation, can not besmoothly preceded without vocabulary knowledge. Also, as D.A. Wilkins (19) put it,“without Grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing can beconveyed.” Therefore, vocabulary is especially critical for language learners, especiallyfor senior high school students. According to New English curriculum Standard (23)senior high school graduates should learn about 4000 words, 400 idioms and somephrases. What’s more, the requirement for reading vocabulary is no less than 230,000words. Since 2003, the English vocabulary requirements for senior high school studentshave become higher than before. Senior high school students are required to not onlyknow the meaning of the words, but be familiar with usage of the words and use them correctly with the increasing score in the composition and subjective items in thecollege entrance examination. Thereby, teachers and senior high school students have topay more attention to vocabulary teaching and learning.
2.2 Vocabulary Teaching in Senior High Schools
As we have mentioned, word is a fundamental element of language. So bothEnglish teachers and learners devote much time to vocabulary teaching and learning.However, English vocabulary teaching and learning is still a headache for teachers andstudents. According to some researches made by Xu Hong’s (2003), Kong Haishen(2009) and so on, English teachers while teaching vocabulary, usually follow thefollowing order: (1) showing pronunciations and every Chinese meaning of the words inthe word list; (2) giving students the collocation of the words if necessary; (3) givingstudents example sentence; (4) giving students a Chinese sentence and asking studentsto translate it into English; (5) testing the master of new words by dictation ortranslation. Therefore, it is obvious to find that teachers dominate the class in such avocabulary teaching pattern, while students are passive receiver, let alone activeparticipant. Besides, in such a teaching routine, teachers ignore students’ cognitionwhich play great role in processing and organizing the information.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework........11
3.1Fillmore’s Frame Theory........11
3.1.1 Definition of Frame........11
3.1.2 Frame Description........13
3.2 Some Important Concepts Related to Frame Theory........13
3.3 Frame Theory and Vocabulary Teaching: Two Related Studies........20
3.3.1 Brown and Payne’s Model for Vocabulary Teaching ........20
3.3.2 Qian Deming & Zhou Qingfang’s Three-stage Teaching Model........21
Chapter Four Application of Frame Theory to Senior High ........23
4.1 Advantages of Applying Frame Theory to English ........23
4.2A Model for English Vocabulary Teaching in Senior High School........28
4.3 A Sample of Teaching Design for Senior High School........33
Chapter Five Conclusion ........39
5.1 Summary of the Study........39
5.2 Suggestions to Future Research.........40
Chapter FourApplication of Frame Theory to Senior High School EnglishVocabulary Teaching
4.1 Advantages of Applying Frame Theory to English Vocabulary Teaching
As we have stated in Chapter Three, frame theory provides a new perspective forlexical understanding with the notion of frame, frame description and other concepts,such as inheritance between frames, prototype and profile. According to Fillmore,words are best understood with reference to frame. Frame is a schematization ofknowledge structure or experience, represented at the conceptual level and held inlong-term memory. It relates elements and entities associated with a particular culturallyembedded scene, situation or event from human experience. In Fillmore’s frame theory,frame can be visualized with frame description, although frame may be abstract at thefirst sight. Besides, there is a hierarchical relation between frames; in other words,frames are bound by shared frame elements. Fillmore incorporates the prototype toimprove his frame theory in 1970s. Prototype refers to a large slice of the culture againstwhich the meaning of a word is defined and understood, and the culture mainly means customs, arts, experience and knowledge, which takes the cultural difference intoconsideration. Furthermore, profile is introduced into Fillmore’s frame theory, which isof great significance to solve the confusion in lexical understanding, especially,polysemy and synonymy. Detailed advantages of applying frame theory to Englishvocabulary teaching are as follows.
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Conclusion
This thesis mainly focuses on the study of English vocabulary teaching andlearning in senior high schools from the perspective of frame theory. It can besummarized as follows:Firstly, through an elaboration on the current situation of vocabulary learning andteaching in senior high schools, senior high school students’ cognitive orientation hasbeen found that most of senior high school students are employing their own lifeexperience and encyclopedic knowledge into vocabulary study. Besides, in traditionalclassroom vocabulary teaching, due to the ignorance of students’ cognition which playsgreat role in processing and organizing information, and the ignorance of the connectionbetween vocabulary meaning and human being’s experience and knowledge structure,senior high school students still have difficulty in differentiating synonyms, identifyingpolysemy, keeping long retention of words, which is what the recent vocabularyteaching should make improvement.Secondly, through a detailed demonstration on frame theory and many detailedanalysis, frame theory is realized to do facilitate the understanding of vocabularymeanings. And the advantages for applying frame theory into English vocabularyteaching are dug out, including, cultivating students’ cultural awareness, enlargingstudents’ vocabulary, helping students’ distinguish synonyms, helping students’ identifythe specific meaning for polysemy, and helping students’improve long term memory.#p#分页标题#e#
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