塾 NO.5 TIME EDUCA.I.10N Ma A PreIiminary Study of Cognitive Strategies in English Vocabulary Learning 刘亚丽 Abstract:The paper ties to putr forward some methods to learn English words effectively from the perspective of cognitive psychology. According to objective cognition rules:human are easier to know things from near surroundings,from similar group,from familiar situations and so on.The article explores that some cognitive strategies such as category,semantic net,context,and chunk are helpful for English vocabulary learning. Key words:cognitive strategy;vocabulary learning;context;categorization; 中图分类号:G642.0 文献标识码:A 文章编号:1672—8181(2009)O5—0100一O2 1 Introduction encoding. The article is concerned with some applications of cognitive strategies to English lexical learning.It explores some new thoughts Cognitive laws also tell:human always recognize things by a series of orders;from self to others;from near to distant;from concrete about how to learn vocabulary effectively in contrast to traditional methods. Vocabulary is the most important element in learning well a objects to abstract concepts.So human can feel and remember things around them quicker and more easily.For example,the word“tree’’ which can be seen everywhere is easier to remember than“universe’’ which needs more cognitive efforts.Moreover.it’s easier to be accepted that processing new information bases on the acquired knowledge like schema and background knowledge.For instance, only after you know“internet”,you can understand the word “foreign language as one of three basic parts(phonetics,vocabulary and grammar).In the conventional college English teaching, grammatical translation is a common way to teach new words. Usually,Teachers teach words and phrases one by one in the list, giving several sentences that are far from students’comprehension. surfing”.Furthermore,people tend to distinguish things from groups Both teachers and students make great efforts to learn and remember new words but the result is not satisfying. The problem makes us consider:what’s wrong with our brain,or are our methods incorrect?According to psycholinguistics,learning which share the similar features. That means Cognitive laws are important ways for people to remember lots of disordered conceptions.Besides,psycholinguistics tells that those words deeply processed will last longer in memory should be as signiifcant as possible so that it can be stored into long- term memory;learning will not be easily forgotten after deep processing;creating some certain settings can help our memory. Therefore,the words learning will be more effective if we are able to follow those cognitive regulations.Therefore,the article tries to illustrate the ideas of applying some cognitive strategies in vocabulary learning such as categorization,semantic net,context,and chunking. than those normally learned.Thereby teachers and learners should avoid mechanical methods as possible as they can. 3 Cognitive Strategies in Vocabulary Learning 3.1 Categorization Categorization is a kind of basic ability of human to recognize and understand the infinite universe.Cognitive psychology regards it as an effective and successful way to handle things by putting names with similar characteristics in a same category.According to this rule, we may group words into different categories to remember.For example,those words appear in a same list:boil,flute,bake,horn, carrot,ofice—blfock,cookie,piano,cinema,pineapple,church,roast, 2 Cognitive rules The psychologist Piaget argues that the cognitive ability experiences three stages:motion,image,and then language:Human’ s language competence can be developed on the basis of acquired cognition which follows the laws people understand the world.When drum,fry.According to cognitive rule,we may divide them into four an object appears before people,its features stimulate the brain by the sensors,and then with the development of cognition,the image of roups:①fgood:cookie;pineapple;carrot;②Building church;pub; cinema;office—block;③Cook:boil;bake;fry;roast;④Instrument: piano;flute;drum;horn.Thus,we can easily remember those words. the object emerges in the mind.After that,the image is formed into a conception by abstracting and inducing.That is how a word forms. By using the method,we can help students enlarge their vocabulary. 3.2 Semantic Net Thus,human establish connections with the outer world.We can see the word formation and its use are both similar:outer stimulation-- response&recognizing--psychological image--conception f0rming_一 Cognitive psychologist A.M.Collins&M.R Quillian put forward that there are various stratiifed nets of cognitive knowledge levels in 1 00— 堕 墼 NO.5 TIME EDUCATION the cognition of human brain.There are lots of nodes in each net (1997)separates chunks into four types in English:1 ̄words& phrases;2.collocation;3.idioms;4.sentence patterns.For example.we may remember“mountain”like this“m—Olin—t-ain’’by four chunks; “blackbird”~“black--bird”and“telephone.…‘photograph”etc. which stands for different conceptions of various things.Each node is linked to another by some semantic association.When one node is stimulated,it can speed up the activation of other relative words.For example,“canary”links“bird”.and“bird’’links“animal”.The phrase chunks like“long.1ong ago”or“a couple of days”can be closer their relationship is,the easier the activation will be between remembered as one chunk;Most verb phrases and prepositional phrases are collocation chunk,like“grow up,make a living,show off, be comprised of;after all,in addition,in terms of,with sth.in mind,’’ and so on;Idiom chunks are relatively inflexible,when we have them we’d better remember them as a unitsuch as“love me,love my ,them.When one word is picked up,it will help expand other nodes. Semantic net structure helps the deep processing of words, which requires learners to associate the new information with familiar knowledge.For example,when you see the word“turkey”,you may connect some schemata like“a big meal”.“Christmas”.“Santa Claus”,“chimney”and so on. ,dog. ‘kick down the ladder”etc.:sentence chunks are quite more difficult than other three types,we need more time to be familiar with them. 3.3 Context In terms of cognitive psychology,a correlative context is an effective way to help remember things in the long—term memory. 4 Conclusion The paper has discussed some methods about lexical instruction in relation to cognitive strategies.By the cognitive regulations,people can easily put the resembling things into a group to remember,so From fl purely linguistic point of view,context has been regarded as the linguistic material preceding and following a word or sentence.In discourse-oriented approaches to language,the context has been categorization is probably an appropriate way for a list of disordered words.Semantic net is suitable to remember some important words because semantic deep processing will become a part of long-term memory.Context will be familiar to recall the correlative vocabulary. Chunking can reduce the lexical number for memory so that we can store more information in our brain.If we can apply some cognitive strategies to English vocabulary learning,it will help us remember new words eficifently. related to the situation in which an utterance is embedded.(Halliday &Hasan 1989)Halliday concludes the setting.communicator and style as the contextual factors. Contextual learning demands learners to apply integrated knowledge to get the target words such ways as schema,cuhural background,sociolinguistics,semantics and so on.That requires students pay more cognitive efforts such as guessing,inference etc. For example,you can offer a text including an unfamiliar key word, giving a choice of explanations,adjusted to the students’leve1.Then the task is to eliminate the explanations supported by the text and ask students to infer the meaning from context.“A coelacanth is a kind of living fossil,first discovered when one was caught off Madagascar in 1938.”A coelacanth is a kind of a.rock;b.plant;cfish d.anima1.If .References: [1]Carroll,David W.Psychology of Language[M].Beijing,Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2000. 【2]Cruse,D.A,Lexical Semantics[M】.Cambridge University Press, 1986. the students are able to catch the information“living fossil(not rock), [31Nation,I.S.P.Learning Vocabulary in Another languages[M].New York:Cambridge University Press,2001. caught(not a plant),off Madagascar(in the sea),”he will infer the werdisthe name ofafish. [4]Ungerer,F,An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics fM】. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2001. As for teachers.they should create suitable situations as much as possible when teaching vocabulary by utilizing some methods like f5]Best,John.B,黄希庭(译)认知心理学IM】.北京:中国轻工业出版 社.2000. pictures,motions,real objects,voice and so on.Moreover,in nowadays,multimedia is a good aid that can provide attracting vitrual [6】桂诗春新编心理语言学【M】.上海:上海外语教育出版社,2002. [7】章宜华.语义学与词典释义【M】.上海:上海辞书出版社,2002. 【8]赵艳芳.认知语言学概论【M].上海:上海外语出版社,2001. settings to those students of learning English as second language. 3.4 Chunking G.A.Miller(1988)puts forward chunking is a kind of encoding orm by combifning some small units into a bigger group which is easier to recognize.Then after enlarging memorial units,brain can store more information because the chunks are optimized.Lewis 【9】文秋芳.英语学习策略论[M】.上海:上海外语教育出版社,2000. 作者简介:刘亚丽(1974一),女,云南建水人,英语硕士,红河学院 外国语学院讲师,研究方向:英语语言及文化,云南蒙自661100 1 01