A Study Of English Vocabulary Teaching In The Junior Middle School From The Perspective Of Category Levels

Over the years, English is the subject which makes students scared. Not only English teachers but also students, regard it difficult to learn. Numerous researches reveal that vocabulary appears to be the biggest obstacle in the way of learning English. Only if students broaden the vocabulary, can they improve their English marks. Therefore, how to improve students’vocabulary becomes the hot topic of researches among teachers, experts and scholars.The category hierarchy theory is one of the most important theories of cognitive linguistics. It mainly contains basic level category theory. In the structure of category hierarchy, basic level category is the most important and basic one. The superordinate category that is summarized on the base of the basic level category, the subordinate category that is embodied the basic level category, together with the basic level category, construct an entire category. In order to work out the problem of low English marks bring by students’ small amount of vocabulary, the author used the category hierarchy theory to guide vocabulary teaching and applied the association, imagery and mind map strategies which were combined with three category levels of category hierarchy theory in vocabulary teaching, to seek solution for the problem.In this thesis, the author conducted the experiment with the association, imagery and mind map strategies combined with three category levels in vocabulary teaching for the students in Class Six, Grade Nine of Guangzhou No.116Middle School. In the experiment, the author led and helped students to expand the superordinate and subordinate categories of the target vocabulary (basic level category) through association, imagery and mind map, so that, they could improve vocabulary memory effect with a steady category structure in their minds. The thesis tried to answer the following2questions:1. Do the vocabulary teaching strategies based on the guidance of category hierarchy theory improve the students’vocabulary memory in EG?2. For the students in EG, are the words at basic category level learned by heart more easily than those at other levels? In order to verify the teaching result, the author adopted the researching ways of questionnaire and experiment. The questionnaire contains two parts, the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire. The pre-questionnaire was done before conducting the experiment, while the post-questionnaire was done after it.The experimental tests contain a pretest and posttest of vocabulary. The pretest was done before the experiment. It adopted the vocabulary test of the second term, Grade Eight, which was suitable for the whole town. The posttest was done after the experiment. However, it adopted the vocabulary test of the first term, Grade Nine, which was suitable for the whole town, and the small vocabulary test edited by the author herself.After one-term-long experiment, the results came out as the following:1) The average score of EG progressed in the vocabulary tests after the experiment, and the standard deviation among members decreased, which showed a significant difference with CG.2) In the post-questionnaire of EG, vocabulary strategies (category, association, imagery and mind map) have significant differences with those of CG.3) Most of the students in the experimental group memorize vocabulary well at all category levels, especially the basic level category and subordinate category.This thesis indicates that applying category hierarchy theory into English vocabulary teaching is good for students’systematic learning and vocabulary memory.While teachers are teaching vocabulary, they could present the vocabulary of three levels visually, to help students learn more solidly and memorize clearly.