Chapter One Introduction
It is vocabulary that is of great importance in each stage of any language or second language learning. It is said by linguist D.A.Wilkins in Linguistics in Language Teaching that without grammar very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed. There can be little doubt that vocabulary acts as the cornerstone of language, especially English, including language skills like listening, speaking, reading and writing. Therefore, vocabulary study plays a significant role in language learning as well as teaching process. As we all know, memorization of vocabulary is an indispensable part of vocabulary acquisition. However, many English learners are faced with the challenge of how to memorize vocabulary and enlarge vocabulary in English language. Thus the main purpose of this thesis is to probe into English vocabulary in its theory, do an empirical study and apply certain cognitive linguistic researches into vocabulary learning and teaching in order to solve the problem of how to memorize vocabulary effectively.
Vocabulary is a unity of structure and meaning in the language system, and constitutes the basic unit of language which is the object concerned by most linguists all the time. Because of influence of structuralism, vocabulary acquisition and its related research have been ignored in the field of applied linguistics for a long time, as well as research in language teaching and second language acquisition. Until the 1970s, the importance of vocabulary learning and teaching has been slowly recognized and much attention has been paid by many educators and scholars to it. There are many domestic and overseas experts and scholars who study English vocabulary learning and memorizing from different angles, some of whom believe that in interpreting texts, students tend to treat words as main landmarks of meaning (Laufer and Sim, 1985) and that the most important handicap for second language readers is not shortage of reading strategies but insufficient vocabulary in English (Haynes and Baker, 1993). In short, lexical problems become a real obstruction in successful comprehension of a &，英语论文范文，英语毕业论文 |
