Semantic Consciousness in English Word Teaching and Learning英语专业毕业论文.doc

Semantic Consciousness in English Word Teaching andLearning AbstractMost English words, especially content words, have got various connotations besides denotations, whichare essential in our daily verbal communication, but may become overwhelming for teachers and studentsto cope with in class. As a consequence, teaching and learning English words and their meanings arealways challenging to non-native English teachers and students who are living in non-English speakingenvironments. Although various methods have been adopted in our daily teaching and learning, and greatefforts are made continually, it is felt that less achievement has been gained than expected. To relieveanxiety and facilitate our English word teaching and learning, semantic consciousness is discussed in thispaper, based on the semantic awareness, which is natural to native speakers. If semantic consciousness isdeveloped and promoted, English teachers, especially non-native English speakers in non-English speakingenvironments, may become clear about how to teach English words pleasantly, efficiently and effectively,and students can feel it enjoyable and pleasant to learn English words. The paper briefly illustrates how todevelop and promote semantic consciousness, which would be helpful to both teachers and students toimprove our present practice in English word teaching and learning.Keywords：Semantic consciousness，denotation，connotation，word，teaching，learningIn the English language, a word is the symbol of sound and meaning, in which the sound is representedby the corresponding letter(s) or phoneme(s), while the meaning is comparatively mandatory and hidden.Generally the pronunciation of the sound can be readily learned, but the whole word and its meaning maystill be rather difficult to remember. With explicit, constructive teaching and constant practice, students,even non-native English students such as the Chinese, soon feel English words not so difficult to pronounce.Quite often our students can read unknown words aloud correctly, but do not know the meaning at all. Thesame is true with listening comprehension. We can hear and even repeat the words but cannot understandwhat the speaker is saying. To help students learn the meaning(s) of the target word, we, as Englishteachers of non-native English speakers, in our daily English word teaching, often try our best to explainthe meaning (s) of the word in an all-round way (pronunciation, orthography, and semantics - denotation,connotation and collocation), even with sentences as examples, hoping that our students can really masterthe vocabulary in this way. In the meantime, students are earnestly and industriously following theirteachers, learning word lists by rote, and trying their best to meet various requirements and pass frequentEnglish tests. In the beginning, such practices work considerably well and remarkable achievement can bemade. But gradually, much to our disappointment and frustration, many of our students soon feel Englishword learning confusing and tedious. As a result, students become rather passive and lose motivation forword teaching and learning. Even those who keep active and hardworking feel depressed when they cannotunderstand what other people have said or written in English, or when they cannot express themselvesbecause they do not know the word(s).Moreover, most of our Chinese students begin to learn English after they have acquired an essentialknowledge of their native language. In learning the English language, our students already know most ofthe concepts, and even the stories or content to be taught in English classes, but not the English words. Thisresults in the common concern of how students can learn English words and remember their correspondingmeanings quickly. English teachers can find it difficult to make word teaching and learning, using therequired textbooks, interesting and productive. So how to teach and learn English words efficiently,-1-effectively and enjoyably has always been one of the main concerns of Chinese teachers and students inteaching and learning English. In order to help teachers and students to make the English word teaching andlearning of English words more interesting, pleasant and productive in routine practices, semanticconsciousness is prompted in this paper. It is held that our English word teaching and learning can beimproved with semantic consciousness to a considerable extent. In the paper semantic consciousness isdefined from a psycholinguistic perspective, why and how to develop semantic consciousness in Englishword teaching and learning are analyzed and explained. The ideas and methods in this paper are expected tobe feasible, practical and helpful to English teachers and learners.1. What Is Semantic Consciousness in English Word Teaching andLearning?In linguistic semantics at present, there are three main and popular schools of ideas. One focuses itsstudies on the structures of language independent of their conditions of use; one insists that the meaning ofsentences is a function of their use; and the other one maintains that semantics will not advance untiltheorists take into account the psychological questions of how people form concepts and how these relate toword meanings. For English word teaching and learning, especially in non-native speaking circumstances,the author is in favor of the third viewpoint, supports the second and firmly believes in the importance ofsemantic consciousness. But what is semantic consciousness?Semantic consciousness for word teaching and learning, literally, means the quality of being fully awareof words meaning(s). Semantics, in linguistics, is the study of the meaning of words, phrases, sentencesand texts, while consciousness, in word teaching and learning, refers to the teachers and learners thoughts,feelings and awareness of the target words. Pyscholinguistically, semantic consciousness involves the basicknowledge of semantics in English lexicon, an acute sensitivity to and interest in the various meanings ofwords, and a high motivation for learning and accumulating as many words and their meanings as possible,in order to use the words appropriately. In practice, semantic consciousness requires both teachers andstudents to hold a positive attitude to English words and their corresponding meanings both decontextuallyand contextually. Teachers are expected to gain and maintain a thorough knowledge of English semantics,including word usefulness and frequency in meaning, how to use the target words appropriately, and how tohelp students learn the meanings of the target word enjoyably and effectively. At the same time, studentsare also expected to become personally and enthusiastically involved in word teaching and learning, andactively undertake the responsibility for enlivening the words and their meanings by constant exposure. Butwhy do we need such semantic consciousness in our English word teaching and learning?2. Why Develop Semantic Consciousness in English Word Teaching andLearning?In its development, the English language has been augmented to include a great number of words andstill accumulates new coinages or expressions every day. 291,500 entries of words were listed in TheOxford English Dictionary (OED, second edition, published by Oxford University Press in 1989), and by2000, 286 main entries had been added. This implies that we may not be able to teach or learn all of theEnglish words, which is the reason why even native English speakers, unavoidably come across new words,even after learning tens of thousands of them. What is also challenging is that multiple meanings of manywords can be too many for us to teach or learn; for example, 430 meanings for the common word, set, canbe found in OED. Moreover, the meaning of a word may vary from context to context, and sometimes, thefigurative meaning of the word cannot be found in dictionaries but must be inferred. This explains why intheir daily word teaching, English teachers, especially non-native English teachers, at least in China, feel it-2-trying to teach the meaning(s) of a target word clearly and vividly. No matter how fully we explain orexemplify the meaning(s) of that target word, we are still unavoidably questioned, even challenged fromtime to time, by some students with some meaning(s) of that word in different contexts. Some of thequestions are answered confidently by our teachers, some skeptically, and some stay unanswered even afterour teachers have tried their best to consult every reference source available.Faced with innumerable English words and their various meanings, strategic and pragmatic methods areextremely crucial in our teaching and learning. In practice, both teachers and students should be fully awareof the demanding work of dealing with English words, and make joint efforts cooperatively and actively tomake our daily word teaching and learning enjoyable and productive. In order to achieve our goal, we canbegin with semantic consciousness, or make semantic consciousness a beneficial supplement to our presentpractice. With semantic consciousness, teachers and students may readily understand 1) why we still meetwith many new words even after we have tried so hard and accumulated a remarkable number of them, 2)why some words can hardly be understood even with dictionaries and encyclopedias, 3) what we areexpected to do in our daily teaching and learning, and 4) how to teach and learn English words asefficiently and effectively as expected. With such fundamental knowledge from semantic consciousness,we may gradually develop and maintain a sustainable enthusiasm and interest in teaching or learningEnglish words, become more sensitive to the semantically contextualized variations of the target word(s),and tackle the problems of ambiguous or controversial words constructively instead of critically.3. How to Develop and Promote Semantic Consciousness in EnglishWord Teaching and learning?Semantically and pragmatically, English words can be classified into function words and content words.Function words are those whose meanings help us to determine relations between words in utterances,which include determiners, pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions (e.g., the, this; he, she; and, or; in, at).The form and the meaning of function words are comparatively consistent, which makes function words aclosed class of words. In contrast, content words are those that vary in meaning with different contexts orcollocations. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs belong to this group, which is known as an open class.Content words are the major words in an utterance because they carry and compose the main idea. They arealso called the open class because they are ready to produce polysemies per se, extensively absorbingsynonyms from both English itself and other languages. Content words have been the main focus ofsemantic studies, and of English word teaching and learning, as well as the main topic of the discussion inthis paper.3.1 Students Prior KnowledgeBefore or while learning English, most non-native English students have acquired a fundamentalknowledge of their native language. If their prior knowledge is used properly, lexical collection can befacilitated and accelerated, and even considerable positive language transfer can be achieved. In Englishword teaching and learning, native language knowledge of function words and concrete nouns, especiallysuch nomenclatures as proper names of objects, people and places, usually plays an essential part inlearning the corresponding English equivalents, because nearly all of the English function words andconcrete nouns can find their counterparts in most other languages, and certainly in Mandarin Chinese,though slight differences do exist in usage. Usually students are more interested in semantic equivalentsthan anything else while learning anything more than semantic instruction can be excessive, makinglearning words a cognitive overload for students. In practice, bilingual dictionaries, textbooks and teachingare preferable. Just with bilingual dictionaries, students can find their favorite English words and learn-3-them enthusiastically. Teaching and learning can highly activate and fully involve students, so that theyactively search for the English versions for what they are interested in and familiar with in their nativelanguage. Students alone, with their peers, can mutually test and challenge each other with the words theyhave newly collected. Students can not only learn those words which are taught or have appeared intextbooks, but also accumulate many more than we expect. With a basic denotation students often find iteasier to deal with the various connotations of words they become familiar with.3.2 Constant ExposureAlong with the augmentation of enormous words, many English words, especially content words, havealso acquired multiple meanings (See Table 1). Even nouns, especially abstract nouns, have gained manyconnotations in addition to their original denotation(s). The same is true of adjectives, adverbs and verbs. Inthe OED, the verb set, as the longest entry in the dictionary, has over 430 senses consisting ofapproximately 60,000 words or 326,000 characters. Imagine how much time it may take us to read throughthe word, set, and its related senses, let alone learn or master them. If we provide our students with a targetword and all of its meanings at once, even together with some exemplary sentences, students will feeloverburdened and tired out. For polysemic words, it is reasonable for us to employ incremental,distributional and incidental method so that students may be constantly exposed to the target word,gradually and pleasantly familiarize themselves with the meanings related. In practice, both teachers andstudents are advised to search for the most commonly used meanings of the target word, and come up withsome interesting reading or listening materials in which the word is used. Some teachers may be so“considerate” to choose materials themselves for the students to learn the polysemic words. Although thematerials chosen are usually considered informative and instructive, students may still feel learning thewords boring so that the teachers efforts will be vain. If self-selection is involved, students will be moremotivated and learn more words and their meanings, because self-direction and interest is an importantcomponent of their learning, which is particularly true of word learning. If an element of rivalry is added,results will become significantly diffe