Cognitive process of english learners in vocabulary learning

Abstract

Vocabulary acquisition and cognition are basic abilities of English learners. The cognitive process in vocabulary learning depends heavily on the psychology of the learner. This paper probes deep into the cognitive process of English learners in vocabulary learning. Firstly, the author summarized some basic theories on vocabulary learning, such as lexical knowledge, lexical information processing, memory and psychological lexical conversion. On this basis, an English vocabulary teaching model was established, in the light of the cognitive process of vocabulary learning. Then, a comparative experiment of vocabulary learning was conducted among 60 freshmen from a university in Beijing, China. Only the experimental group was taught by the proposed model. The learning effect of each subject was measured in pre-and post-tests. The results show that the cognitive process of vocabulary learning mainly includes three processes: attention, cognition and output; the proposed cognitive process-based teaching model can promote the learning strategy and vocabulary acquisition of English learners. This research throws light on English vocabulary teaching in colleges across China.