The Application Of Conceptual Integration Theory To College English Vocabulary Teaching

Language is the most important tool for human communication, and vocabulary is one of the most important components of the language. Learning a language normally starts with learning vocabulary. But in China where English is a foreign language, how can Chinese teachers take effective measures to improve Chinese learners'quantity of English vocabulary and how to help the learners to use these words? These are the issues that scholars in the field of applied linguistics have been concerned with.In China, there are some traditional approaches of vocabulary teaching, such as Grammar Translation Method, Audio-Lingual Method, and Direct Method and so on. Most of them focus on the introduction of the word's pronunciation, formation, meaning and the strategies of memorizing. These methods, however, fail to solve the crucial problem of the thorough comprehension of the words. Most Chinese learners can hardly grasp the meaning of the words completely, nor use the words flexibly.Conceptual Integration Theory (CIT), as a main part of Cognitive Linguistics, refers to the theory of a Mental Space Network which includes four mental spaces: two Input Spaces, one Generic Space and one Blended Space. During the studying of vocabulary, each of the Input Spaces is a partial structure corresponding to the Generic Space, and then the identities of the Generic Spaces are selectively projected to the Blended Space by cross-space mapping, matching and so on.This thesis attempts to apply to CIT to a detail analysis of English vocabulary from TEMP Four Vocabulary List, based on the six fundamental ways of word formation, namely, compounds, inflection, derivation, conversion, blending, initializes and other word-formations. During this process, the author pays attention to building Mental Space Network during the whole process of learning English vocabulary, so that the Chinese learners can set up some relationships between the old and the new knowledge, and deeply understand the meaning of the English vocabulary. In order to test whether CIT model is effective or not, the author conducted an experiment and designed a series of tests. The experiment, which was carried out among non-English major students who were enrolled in Liaoning Normal University in 2009, included an experimental class and a control class. After the three months of experiment, the statistic results showed that there is a significant improvement on the vocabulary understanding and remembering in the experimental class. The thesis comes to a conclusion that the Chinese teachers can improve their learners'quantity of English vocabulary and help the learners to use the words flexibly with the Conceptual Integration Theory (CIT). The learners can get the meaning of the new words from the old word stock, and those cognitive frames of event serve as a firm conceptual network in our human mind.