An Empirical Research On Cognitive Model Based Teaching Of English Vocabulary

Vocabulary is an important component of language as well as the base oflinguistic abilities. Vocabulary study is of critical importance in language learning.Therefore scholars, teachers and educators involved in second language learning havepursued research into vocabulary acquisition from different aspects, and made greatcontributions to vocabulary learning and teaching.However, main research trends about vocabulary acquisition are either aboutword acquisition through context or about learner strategy instruction. It is fullyaccepted in language teaching that words should not be learned in isolation, butembedded in context as they are used in natural communication. Yet introducing andpracticing every word in a natural context is a very time-consuming procedure.This study employs Cognitive Model (CM) as the rationale for the acquisition ofEnglish vocabulary and explores its possible application into vocabulary teaching.CM，which is proposed by Lakoff in1987, is a very important theory in cognitivelinguistics.“It is a term used to cover all the stored cognitive representations thatbelong to a certain field”(F.Ungerer＆H.J. Schmid,2006). CM is a mental entitymade of a set of related concepts, and in the linguistic representation of it is a set ofrelated words. In other words, concepts correspond to words at the linguistic level areorganized in structures referred to as CMs. Therefore it is quite obvious that someword items are successfully employed because they reflect the way our mental lexiconis structured. CM does not only provide justification for the use of lexical fields, but itcan also explain how they should be structured. The study is designed to seek answersto the following questions:（1）Is cognitive model based vocabulary teaching moreeffective than traditional methods of vocabulary teaching?（2）What implications forvocabulary teaching can be drawn from cognitive model theory?This study is about an empirical research on vocabulary teaching based on CM.The subjects involved in this study were55teachers and73students from two classesof Grade six. The teachers were given a questionnaire on their vocabulary teachingideas and methods. The students were divided into Experiment Group (EG) andControl Group (CG). According to their pre-test scores, there was no significantdifference between EG and CG on their vocabulary level. During the experiment，53word items based on four CMs were covered and three vocabulary tests were administered to compare the two classes so as to testify the influence of teachingvocabulary based on CMs. It is proved that CM based vocabulary teaching is moreeffective than traditional methods of vocabulary teaching. A questionnaire on theirlearning methods and strategies were given to the students at the end of theexperimental classes. The results of the survey state that students prefer learningvocabulary based on CMs and CMS helped them more in acquisition of new words.Based on the results of the experiment, the effects of CM based vocabulary teachingand pedagogical implications could be summarized as: firstly, teachers can optimizetheir vocabulary teaching methods based on the cognitive models, such as selectingrelated words; secondly, students will optimize their vocabulary learning methods andstrategies to acquire more related new words.The final part draws out the conclusions. It ends up by pointing out thelimitations of this research and some recommendations for future researches.This study can enrich the theory on vocabulary teaching and learning. Moreover,the finding of the research may help the foreign language learners in their vocabularylearning, and also help teachers gain a better understanding of teaching approach.Therefore, the research is necessary and important for both learners and teachers ofEnglish.