Embodied Features Of Concept Processing In Junior High School English Vocabulary And Its Applications

To improve junior high school students’ vocabulary ability in words memory andapplication is one of the top priorities of vocabulary teaching. W. M. Rivers (1983:125)once pointed out that a copious vocabulary is the foundation of successfully mastering aforeign language for each language learner. However, a poor vocabulary will inevitablyhave a bad effect on English learning and daily communication. Nevertheless, in theforeign language teaching, because of the little focus on English vocabulary teaching andlearning, most of students adopt the rote learning method to memorize the vocabulary.But this kind of method fails to effectively help the students to remember the Englishpolysemy words which express different meaning in different context. As a result oflacking the contextual analysis ability, numerous students cannot really grasp theimplication of words.In recent years, a large number of cognitive linguists have suggested that Embodiedcognition should be applied to foreign language teaching. Embodied cognitionemphasizes the body interaction with the environment. Based on physical initiative andsituational learning, the embodied cognition can deepen English learners’ understandingand memorizing of vocabulary. On the basis of Embodied cognition, there must exist acertain connection in different meanings of polysemy words. Students, who mastered thefundamental meaning of a new word, could deduce and master the precise meaning ofthe word in different contexts in the light of embodied cognition. However, in the processof vocabulary teaching, the teacher should enlighten the students that the senses of wordsvary with different time, space and contexts. The senses of words come from human’scognitive association. It is because of the cognitive association that the vocabulary couldform an associated and regular polysemous category. In order to testify the explanative force of Embodied cognition in the Junior HighEnglish learning and teaching, this thesis conducts an empirical study through thecombination of embodied cognition theory with English vocabulary learning andteaching. In view of the related literature and achievements both at home and abroad, theauthor，through a two-month empirical research，finally draws a conclusion that it isfeasible to apply the Embodied cognition to Junior High English learning and teaching.In addition, the Embodied cognition could improve students’ understanding andapplication of the polysemy words. From the two-month empirical study, the authorcomes up with a brand new approach, that is, WPS model (word-phrase-sentence, thevocabulary deep memorizing model from word to phrase to sentence) integrated withEmbodied cognition. The model provides a new solution to the problem of memorizingthe polysemy words of Junior High English.The whole thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter One briefly introduces theresearch background, purpose, significance, etc. Chapter Two presents from the cognitivelinguistic aspect and summarizes the comments of the studies applying Embodiedcognition theory to English vocabulary teaching. Chapter Three elaborates the theoreticalbasis of this research, Embodied Cognition. Chapter Four is about the empirical studywhich combines Embodied cognition with English vocabulary teaching. It mainlyconsists of researching method, empirical study, and experiment process, the operation ofthe experiment and the analysis of the research data. Chapter Five applies the theory topractice, combining People’s Education Press teaching material. The author proposeddifferent teaching methods from the angle of embodiment process of English vocabularyand the teaching strategies of polysemy words. In Chapter Six, the conclusion comes intobeing, which comes up with the major findings, limitations and gives suggestions forfurther research.