The Efficiency of Frame Semantics and Categorization in Vocabulary Teaching

So far, considerable attempts have been made by methodologists to design various techniques for teaching vocabulary to EFL learners. By the same token, this research tries to utilize Frame Semantics Theory (Fillmore,1982) and Categorization Theory (Rosch, 1978) to contrive systematic procedures in vocabulary teaching methodology and observe how they lead meaningful learning to a more efficient and acceptable level. Thus, 300 male and female English learners in different ages and linguistic levels within an English language institute were carefully studied for one year. Each participated group - included 13 to 18 students–had access to the same teaching materials just like its equal counterpart which was deprived of the pilot methodology. All groups were meticulously controlled from the points of different Environment, Grouping and Measurement variables (Brown 1988) such as former and current homogeneity of target linguistic knowledge, age, gender, maturation, etc. The results show that without considering the way materials have been organized in any textbook, applying proper semantic frame or category in topic-based vocabulary teaching can facilitate memorization of words in the long-term memory and increase proficiency of learners in real communicative contexts.

Frame Semantics; Categorization; Vocabulary Teaching