The Modifying Effect Of Force Degree Of Adverbs On The Semantic Processing Of Target Action Verbs For The Chinese EFL Learners And Its Pedagogical

Previous studies have shown that the semantic understanding of action verbs is a process of embodied simulation,and the verb itself is often restricted by scope,mode,degree and mood from the aspects of human or object behavior,action,change,etc.,which indicates that verbs usually carry these restrictive meanings.While on the grammatical level,the verbs are usually modified by adverbs.Therefore,can adverbs and verbs be combined in the teaching of action verbs to improve the teaching efficiency of action verbs? To answer the question,this paper,under the guidance of the embodied cognition theory,studies whether the force degree of adverbs has a modifying effect on the semantic processing of respective target action verbs through behavioral experiment,so as to promote students’ understanding of action verbs and a new English vocabulary teaching method and learning strategy will be proposed.The specific research questions are stated as follows:(1)Is there any modifying effect of force degree of English adverbs on the semantic processing of target English action verbs?(2)Is there any modifying effect of force degree of Chinese adverbs on the semantic processing of target Chinese action verbs?(3)Is there any modifying effect difference between the force degree of English adverbs and Chinese adverbs on the semantic processing of respective target action verbs? If yes,what is the difference?The present study includes two experiments.Experiment One adopts a single-factor(English adverb-action verb structure type)with four levels(intensifying adverb-concrete action verb,intensifying adverb-abstract action verb,attenuating adverb-concrete action verb,and attenuating adverb-abstract action verb)design to investigate whether there is a modifying effect of force degree of English adverbs on the semantic processing of target action verbs.Experiment Two also adopts a single-factor(Chinese adverb-action verb structure type)with four levels(intensifying adverb-concrete action verb,intensifying adverb-abstract action verb,attenuating adverb-concrete action verb,and attenuating adverb-abstract action verb)design to investigate whether there is a modifying effect of force degree of Chinese adverbs on the semantic processing of target action verbs.Both experiments selected30 students from a university in Chongqing as subjects.The experimental task was to make semantic decisions,and the behavioral data(reaction time and accuracy rate)of the subjects when making judgments on the target words were recorded.The experiment was programmed with E-Prime 2.0 software,and the results were input into SPSS22 statistical software for statistical analysis.(1)The results of Experiment One show that there is a a modifying effect of force degree of English adverbs on the semantic processing of target action verbs(F(3,476)=7.690,p<.001): the processing speeds of both English intensifying adverb-concrete action verb collocation and intensifying adverb-abstract action verb collocation were significantly higher than those of attenuating adverb-concrete action verb collocation and attenuating adverb-abstract action verb collocation.This indicates that the force degree of English adverbs has a modifying effect on the semantic processing of target action verbs,and the embodied effect of concrete action verbs is more prominent than that of abstract action verbs.(2)The results of Experiment Two show that there is also a modifying effect of force degree of Chinese adverbs on the semantic processing of target action verbs(F(3,476)=10.01,p<.0001): the processing speed of Chinese intensifying adverb-concrete action verb collocation is significantly higher than that of Chinese attenuating adverb-concrete action verb collocation,but the processing speed of Chinese intensifying adverb-abstract action verb collocation is not significantly higher than that of Chinese attenuating adverb-abstract action verb collocation.But in the Chinese adverb-action verb collocation processing,the processing speed of concrete action verbs is higher than that of abstract action verbs,which indicates that the processing of Chinese adverb-action verb still conforms to the embodied cognition theory.(3)The comparison of Experiment One and Experiment Two shows that the force degree of English/Chinese adverbs has some modifying effect on the semantic processing of respective target action verbs.Besides,the modifying effect of force degree of Chinese adverbs is greater than that of English adverbs.To sum up,there is a modifying effect of force degree of English/Chinese adverbs on the semantic processing of respective target action verbs,and the modifying effect of force degree of English adverbs is more prominent,which indicates that there is still native language dominance effect in processing adverb-verb collocations.Therefore,adverb-action verb collocation teaching can be used in English action verb vocabulary teaching to improve teaching efficiency.