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Vocabulary Learning: Exploring the Relationship between English Affixes and Chinese Radicals

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DOI: 10.23977/ieesasm.2019.005

Author(s)

Xiaoli Jiang, Jieyun Feng

Corresponding Author

Jieyun Feng

ABSTRACT

Vocabulary is an important part of English learning. The vocabulary size of college students has become one of the main measures of their English proficiency. English and Chinese belong to different language families. As English is an alphabet language and Chinese is a hieroglyphic language, it is generally considered that the lexicons of the two languages have little in common and that it is difficult to achieve positive transfer when Chinese English learners learn English vocabulary. This paper addresses the guidance of cognitive linguistics in vocabulary learning, investigates English vocabulary learning among Chinese learners and particularly focuses on the relationship between English affixes and Chinese radicals. In addition to providing an integrated application of Category Theory and Transfer Theory in cognitive linguistics, this paper also incorporates one of the author’s participant observation as a college English teacher in China. In conclusion, this paper reveals a new vocabulary learning method for Chinese English learners by finding the similarities between English prefixes and Chinese radicals. This study suggests conducting more studies investigating how cognitive knowledge and theories can facilitate non-English speakers’ vocabulary learning, even if their mother languages and English are highly distinct.

KEYWORDS

Cognitive linguistics, the Category Theory, the Transfer Theory, English affixes, Chinese radicals

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