The Extension And Intension Inheritance Theory And Its Pedagogical Implication In College English Lexical Teaching

Vocabulary is an important part of language, and it is the basis of learning language well. English is no exception. Word forms are various and polysemy is frequent in English, which brings great difficulties to many English learners and makes them step back. So vocabulary teaching researches have drawn the attention of foreign teachers. The research in this area is very productive. However, vocabulary learning is still a great difficult for the second language learners. There is still a long way for us to explore more effective vocabulary teaching methods.Metaphor was regarded as a figure of speech at first, but since1970s, it has been researched in many disciplines, one of which is cognitive linguistics. As a cognitive linguist, XU Shenghuan (2009) put forward the extension and intension inheritance theory. According to his theory, the core of the mechanism of metaphor is "The Target is the Source", which may be reduced in the form of "A is B"."The Target is the Source" is substantially realized that as for the extension and the intension of the Target, part of their contents is changed to be the Source, from which he Source is chosen and affirmed. Since then the cognitive effect is obtained which relates to the reducing interpretation of the target. The above whole process is visually defined as the inheritance of the contents of the extension and intension from the Target to the Source.The extension and intension inheritance theory plays an important part in the process of vocabulary evolution. First, once the extensive meanings and intensive meanings of a word is admitted and used widely, they are to become new items of a word and this word is likely to become polysemy. Second, the extension and intension inheritance theory constitutes the motivation for word formations and idioms.On the basis of the theories stated above, the extension and intension inheritance theory also provides a new point of view to vocabulary learning and teaching of a foreign language. In this paper, the author firstly introduces the developing process of metaphor and the extension and intension inheritance theory; and then it points out their significance in vocabulary teaching&learning. Secondly, this thesis intends to explore the effectiveness of the application of the extension and intension inheritance theory to the teaching of English words and to testify its feasibility. One questionnaire and two vocabulary size tests are adopted in this thesis, among which, the questionnaire is employed to measure the vocabulary competence of the subjects and to make sure that the two groups in the experimental are at the same level, and to work as the criterion for the division of the subjects. The tests here are designed to manifests that after the metaphorical competence training, whether there is any progress in the subjects and which level of the subjects benefit most from the training. At last, this thesis also put forward pedagogical implications for both teachers and learners.According to the study, foreign language learners can memorize and comprehend the vocabulary more easily through the extension and intension inheritance theory. Thus, foreign language teachers can introduce metaphor teaching method into vocabulary teaching, help students develop metaphor competence, and improve their vocabulary learning effectiveness.