Cognitive Linguistics to Upskill English Survival Vocabulary to the Malayali Tribal Students Inhibited by Psychological and Environmental Factors

Abstract

English language teaching and learning at school is crucial for tribal students in this globalisation. This study aims to upskill the English survival vocabulary from A1 to A2 level according to the CERF vocabulary acquisition rubrics through Cognitive Linguistics (CL) to the upper primary tribal learners in Tamil Nadu, India. The paper expounds on two areas (1) the psychological and environmental factors that inhibit the learners to learn the English language, predominantly the tribal students of Tamil Nadu, India, and (2) CL concepts and the pedagogical characteristics that cover the methods and activities to inculcate English survival vocabulary in the language classroom effectively. CL concepts such as prototypes, schema, level of categorisation, and semantic mapping are applied to teach students to learn vocabulary. The study follows a quantitative experimental design, and the participants were selected through a convenient sampling method. The research experiment was conducted with experiment (N=50) and control groups (N=50). Activities were incorporated into the experimental group in the teaching and learning processes. The data for this study was procured through pre-test and post-test, and the result of both groups was juxtaposed through SPSS software. The data analysed with paired sample t-test revealed the effectiveness of CL in learning English survival vocabulary.