An Empirical Study On English Vocabulary Retention Based On Prototype Category Theory

As we know, vocabulary is one of the important elements of language. What's more, it takes effect on learners'English expression, even communication. D.A.Wilkins (1972) once describes"Without grammar, very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed."However, it is hard for L2 learners to store a sea of words for a long time and easy to forget. Meanwhile, many scholars proposed the application of prototype category theory, which is one of the fundamental theories of cognitive linguistics, to memorizing English vocabulary to resolve the problems mentioned above, and have tested its credibility and efficiency.This study, based on the prototype category theory and previous relevant researches, investigates the application of this theory to memorizing English vocabulary. The aim is not only to detail the memory effect of associative words belonging to the same prototype category for Chinese learners of freshmen and juniors from English major, but also to explore whether there is different effect upon the two groups.The study was made up of three parts, that is, vocabulary recognition and theory explanation, the test, and the survey. Two groups of participants participated in the experiment. One was freshmen and the other was juniors. The materials, including 26 lists, in the experiment were developed from the materials used by Stadler, Roediger & McDermott (1999), and were programmed into the computer by the software of E-prime (a commercialized psychology software tool for collecting reaction time). Both choice scoring and reaction time would be collected through E-prime and imported into the SPSS 11.5 to be analyzed.The major findings of the study are that it indeed improved the learners'vocabulary retention based on the prototype category theory, and the good memory effect of associated vocabulary didn't change greatly as the learners'grade changed. The application of prototype category theory to storing vocabulary could help the L2 learners build an associative-semantic network or a large conceptual network, which was not confined to the English proficiency of them and could be employed by freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors, thus effectively storing a sea of English vocabulary, and enlarging their vocabulary size. In addition, all the participants didn't have negative comments on this way to memorize English vocabulary, and were willing to consciously employ it in the future. What's more, it was also revealed that a few of participants tended to employ other ways to store English vocabulary according to the concrete cases.