Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of Present Study
In China, English teaching always meets with various obstacles, withvocabulary teaching being one of the biggest. Narrowing it down to a morespecialized field, the teaching of medical English vocabularies is full of problems inthe previous teaching activities. What should be noticed is that the teaching ofmedical vocabularies hasn’t yet found a comprehensive way to be utilized and theweakness of medical vocabulary learning may result in problems in other aspects of English learning, for instance, listening, speaking, reading and writing. As the basis oflanguage learning, vocabulary learning turns out to be the most difficult part ofmedical English learning. Consequently, the students who specialize in medicine willencounter various difficulties in understanding the medical literature, which is usuallywritten in English. Therefore, medical English vocabulary is usually believed to bedifficult and even boring to be learned. It is accepted that medical terminology is a key factor which hinders thestudents from achieving satisfactory learning outcomes in medical English. Brieflyspeaking, the features of medical vocabulary can be characterized by the difficulty inspelling, pronunciation, and meaning. Compared with daily words, medical Englishvocabulary poses more difficulties to students. So working out an efficient andeffective way becomes crucial and necessary.
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1.2 Overall Structure of the Thesis
The thesis consists of five chapters as follows:Chapter One gives a general introduction of the whole thesis, including thebackground of the present study, the purpose and significance of the study.Chapter Two is the literature review which contains the previous studies oniconicity development and vocabulary, especially medical English vocabulary. Thereview of iconicity manifests the possibility of it in vocabulary learning. Besides, theprinciples of iconicity are presented based on various language levels, such as lexis,syntax, and text. In particular, it is iconicity which relates to lexical level that lays thetheory foundation for this thesis.Chapter Three presents the methodology of the thesis. It begins with theresearch questions and research hypothesis, followed by a methodological descriptionof subjects, research design, instruments and the procedure of data analysis.Chapter Four deals with the results of the experiment and presents thediscussion based on the results. The result of the pre-test and post-test of EC and CCcan reflect the effect of iconicity-based instruction on students. The result of thequestionnaire indicates how the students perceive the iconicity-based instruction inmedical vocabulary. Chapter Five puts forward major findings, and the pedagogical implications ofthe study. Besides, the limitations of the study and the suggestions for furtherresearches are referred to.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Key Concepts of Iconicity
Both Chinese and foreign scholars have attempted to define iconicity. Therefore,various definitions of iconicity have been given, while some of them are subtlydifferent, for their focusing point may vary according to their own study. XuGuozhang (1988) first introduced and translates the word ‘iconicity’ into ‘象似性’ inChina, but didn’t give an exact meaning from his own point of view. Shen Jiaxuan(1993), in his article, “The Problems of Syntax in Iconicity”, points out that the termiconicity, on the contrary of arbitrariness, means the natural relationship betweensignifier and signified of linguistic signs. The connection of the two can be reasonedand motivated and the iconicity of language structure reflects people’s conceptualstructure. Yan Chensong (1997) states that iconicity, to some degree, indicates that thelanguage structure reflects the world structure which people have experienced. WangYin (1999) defines iconicity in a more comprehensive and detailed way, which meansthe similarity between linguistic signs in phonology, morphology or syntacticstructure and their signified. And his definition can be illustrated in three levels: thephonological level, which means the sound of some words has some imitation orresemblance relationship with what it signified; the morphological level whichemphasizes that the form of writing exits the iconic relationship with its meaning; thesyntactic level which suggests that the language structure, to some extent, indicates the world structure which has been experienced by people, as well as directly reflectspeople’s conceptual structure.
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2.2 Related Theories of Iconicity
With the development of language study, some linguists began to viewarbitrariness in different perspectives. Especially with the emergence and recognitionof cognitive linguistics since 1960s, iconicity is put forward as a distinct and totallyreversible concept opposing to arbitrariness. As a matter of fact, early in the 19thcentury, Pierce, the American philosopher who is the founder of semiotics andpracticalism, has adopted the term ‘iconicity’ and distinguished the signs into threeclasses, that is, symbol, index and icon, according to the relation between signifiedand signifier. However, his opinions fail to draw the attention of people at that time,partially due to the enormous influence of Saussure.While things seemed to be changed by Jacobson (1965) in 1960s, in his book,Quest for the Essence of Language, (pp.345-359), he agrees with Pierce’s notion,iconicity, and regarded as a universal phenomenon in language. Together with thepopularization of cognitive linguistics, the principle of motivation has beenrecognized and gained more acceptance. And Lakoff & Johnson (1999, p.346) pointsout that there is more motivation in a language in a language than arbitrariness.Iconicity then has become a central issue in linguistic study.
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Chapter 3 The Methodology ........31
3.1 Research Questions ....31
3.2 Subject .........32
3.3 Instrument .........32
3.4 Data Collection and Analysis ....38
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion ....40
4.1 Results of the Experiment ....40
4.1.1 Results of the Pre-test ........ 40
4.1.2 Results of the Post-test ........42
4.1.3 Results of the Questionnaire ....46
4.2 Discussion ........50
Chapter 5 Conclusion ........54
5.1 Major Findings.......54
5.2 Pedagogical Implications......55
5.3 Limitations of the Study ......56
5.4 Suggestions for Further Researches ....57
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion
4.1 Results of the Experiment
In the process of experiment, the scores of each test were put into SPSS (16.0)to be analyzed. And the results of pre-test, post-test will be displayed in the form oftables which got from SPSS respectively. The pre-test was given to the students before the experiment to see whether thelevel of EC and CC in medical vocabulary is basically equal to each other. The scoresof pre-test were from 120 students’ pre-test, including 60 from EC and 60 from CC.After that, the scores were put into SPSS (16.0) and calculated. The following tablespresent the results of pre-test. Table 4.1 shows the mean as well as the standard deviation of experimentalclass and controlled class. In this table, the mean score of EC is 76.53 and the meanscore is 76.12 in CC, which indicates that there is no obvious difference between thetwo classes in their grasp of medical vocabulary.In order to further testify the level of EC and CC in the grasp of medicalvocabulary is basically similar, Independent Samples Test is used to help show theresult in Table 4.2.
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Conclusion
The iconicity theory is under the field of cognitive linguistics, and itsapplication to teaching, makes it of applied significance. The research of this paperwhich aims at the medical vocabularies has been verified to be feasible and valuable.Based on the results of the study in the previous chapter, the findings of the researchcan be summarized as follows:Firstly, the students do realize the importance of learning medical Englishvocabulary, but the fact is that they do not have a systematic way before. What’s more,the difficulties they encounter during the process of memorizing mechanically mayhinder their efficiency and interest if not dealt with properly.Secondly, the results of the pre-test show that the two groups have a similarlevel of vocabulary volume and background. While after the training related toiconicity, the results of the post-test indicate that EC performs considerably betterthan CC in the grasp of English Medical vocabulary.Thirdly, the results of the questionnaire reflect students’ perception and attitudestowards this form of medical English instruction. They benefit from it with highlyappreciation and recognition. What they have learnt is not only the new words in classbut the strategies which help to memorize more in the future.
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Reference (omitted)