Chapter One Literature Review
1.1 Current Vocabulary Learning Strategies of English Learners
Now that vocabulary plays such an important role in language learning, which isalso realized by more and more researchers and linguists gradually, a number ofvocabulary acquisition strategies have been put forward. Generally speaking, learningstrategies are learners conscious, goal-oriented and problem-solving based efforts toachieve learning efficiency (戴炜栋，何兆熊; 2002). And among various divisions oflearning strategies, those by Chamot and Oxford (1990) are widely accepted. In the field of vocabulary acquisition, Rubin (1987) defines vocabulary learningstrategy as “the process by which information is obtained, stored, retrieved and used”.And Schmitt (1997) improves it as “the specific approaches, methods, behaviors, steps or techniques learners adopt consciously to improve their progress in learningtarget language vocabularies.”However, it seems that there is little application in theactual vocabulary acquisition practice. Here this thesis will discuss some of thestrategies that language learners used.
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1.2 English Vocabulary Acquisition from the Category Theory
Cognitive linguistics provides a new aspect to study language, in which categorytheory has a great significance in explaining the acquisition of vocabularies. In the1970s, the classical theory was put forward according to Aristotle s study, whichmarked the appearance of cognitive linguistics. However, with the development of thecognitive linguistics, many linguists found the classical category theory is unable toexplain many new linguistic phenomena. Then Rosch firstly put forward the prototypecategory theory, which improved the category theory to a new height. In 1950s, Chomsky published the monograph Syntactic Structures, which is regarded as a greatimpetus to the cognitive revolution. Thereafter, many linguists got devoted to find therelationship between language and cognition and finally it was emphasized by JeanPiaget in 1960s. He transformed the sensorimotor movement of infants into the formaland reasonable activity of adults from the cognitive aspect. All these form theprecursor of cognitive linguistics. Ungerer and Schmid gave the definition that:“Cognitive linguistics is based on human experiences of the world and the way theyperceive and conceptualize the world.”The classical theory of category and theprototype theory of category are two important contents of the category theory, whichalso form the evolution of the category theory. Generally speaking, Aristotle is regarded as the representative of the classicaltheory. In his monograph Metaphysics, Aristotle first proposed the notion of category,which evoked a heated discussion on this new concept and eventually beenacknowledged in the 20thcentury. Aristotle gives a simple definition of man forexample to prove his theory: “two-footed animal”. In this example, the features of“two-footed” and “animal” are the features of being a man. As to the culturalbackground of a “thing”, which race it belongs to and what color it is are accidentalwhich doesn t matter in determining whether the “thing” is factually a man or not.
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Chapter Two The Theoretical Framework
2.1 Category and Categorization
Category theory is an important notion in cognitive linguistics, which containsthe prototype theory that can provide great help in vocabulary acquisition. Asdiscussed above, it is Eleanor Rosch who put forward the prototype category theoryafter a series of experiments and researches on the internal structure of differentcategories and their nature in the mid 1970s. Before discussing the prototype theory indetail, the notion of category and categorization should be introduced briefly.It always seems that the world we live in contains numerous objects andcomplicated phenomena, which seems difficult to be transformed into humanimagination and described in verbal behavior in regular. However, the truth is that theinformation delivered from the world is not chaotic, on the contrary, everything in theworld has its rules and principles which make it similar or different from the others,and according to which the world can be classified into different categories, themental process of which is called categorization. For example, we can see differentkinds of pet dogs or cats on the streets together with their masters, and there arehorses and sheep living in the grassland and lions and tigers in the forest and fish inthe water and birds in the sky, which seems that nothing can link them together. Butwhen it comes to the notion animal, each of them belong to the animal category as they all animate and are able to walk or move freely from one position to another.
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2.2 Prototype Category Theory
As discussed in the last section, it is Eleanor Rosch and her assistants who putforward the prototype theory when they are researching on the human categorizationin the mid 1970s. Prototype category theory is the newest theoretical achievement ofcategory theory that is put forward on the basis of Wittgenstein s family resemblancetheory. The classical category theory requires the members of a category to contain allthe features that the category defined. If it does not, it will not belong to the category,where the fuzzy boundaries do not exist. When comes to the prototype categorytheory, Rosch thought that an entity need not possess all the features of a category tobe one of its member. According to the prototype category theory, there are bestexamples in a category, which means that the members do not have equal status.Some members are well suited to the category and are labeled as the best examples,while the other members may have a low status as they just to some extent similarwith the example entities. For example, in speaking of the category of crops, there area great number of prototypes or examples such as wheat, corn, soybean and rice andso on. All these traditional crops mentioned can be regarded as typical members of thecrop category, as they are the best examples and named out in the first place.Simultaneously, the peanut, sweet potato and sorghum and some other crops are alsomembers of the crop category, though they may not so typical as the wheat and corn.However, with the development of science and technology, the clone crops graduallycome into being and popularize in society all over the world in recent years. So therecomes the question that whether the clone crops belong to the crop category or not.
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Chapter Three An Experiment on the Category Theory Guided English.............25
3.1 Current Situation of English Vocabulary Acquisition ......26
3.1.1 Data Collection and Analysis ...........26
3.1.2 Research result of the Current Situation of English........29
3.2 Experiment Preparation and Design.....30
3.3 The Concrete Experiment Procedures.........32
3.3.1 Vocabulary Pretest and Analysis ......33
3.3.2 Implementation of the Posttest.........34
3.3.3 Data Analysis and Discussion ..........36
3.4 Discussion on the Practical Application of Category Theory ........38
3.4.1 Significance of Vocabulary Association in Prototype Theory....39
3.4.2 Connection in Different Levels of Category .........40
Chapter Four The Practical Application of Category ....43
4.1 Cognitive Process of the Vocabulary Acquisition ....43
4.2 Category Theory Based English Vocabulary Acquisition Strategies....45
4.3 Ductility and Flexibility of the Semantic Category........50
Chapter Four The Practical Application of Category Theory to Vocabulary Acquisition
The significance of vocabulary acquisition in English learning has been realizedby both the linguists and the learners and accordingly many researches areimplemented to find a better method to acquire vocabularies. However, almost alllanguage learners have trouble in finding out an appropriate and efficient strategy toacquire vocabularies for the methods they use to acquire vocabulary is not so valid. Inaddition, students are in fact not satisfied with teachers current vocabulary teachingmethods in that the vocabulary teaching methods have failed to improve their interestin vocabulary acquisition, much less to enlarge their vocabulary size, although theyare helpful to some extent. Many linguists have also proposed a variety of strategiesof vocabulary acquisition but the result does not seem optimistic. The research showsthat most of the English learners are eager to find a vocabulary acquisition strategythat can save much time and energy when memorizing vocabularies.Category theory is an important theory to guide the acquisition of vocabulary.According to the experiment implemented in Chapter Three, the practical applicationof category theory to English vocabulary acquisition turned out to be feasible andeffective, by which the language learners vocabulary size enlarged enormously andtheir vocabulary learning positivity has improved mostly. Generally speaking,cognitive category theory can help English learners build different kinds ofvocabulary categories, in which the vocabularies to be acquired are divided into thesedifferent categories respectively and English learners can easily master the newvocabularies. This chapter will mainly discuss about the advantages of applyingcategory theory to English vocabulary acquisition. Besides, the superiority of categorytheory and some of the English vocabulary acquisition strategies guided by it will beintroduced.
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Conclusion
Vocabulary is the basic and dominating unit of human language and the unity ofstructure and meaning in language system, without which the human communicationwill be unthinkable. Though most of the English learners in China have attached greatimportance to English vocabulary learning, vocabulary keeps being their difficult andweak point. Therefore, language learners should pay more attention to vocabularyacquisition in the process of English learning, transform the old learning idea andimprove traditional learning strategies to achieve better learning effect. In this thesis,the author mainly discussed the cognitive category theory guided vocabularyacquisition strategy.Cognitive linguistics studies language and language use in the world and the wayhuman beings perceive and conceptualize the world. It provides a brand new methodto the study of human language and the interaction between language and the world.Category and categorization theory is one of the most important theories of cognitivelinguistics, which attaches much research energy to vocabulary acquisition andprovides vocabulary acquisition strategies that facilitate vocabulary memorizationmore easily and effectively.#p#分页标题#e#
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