English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies ISSN 2640-9836 (Print) ISSN 2640-9844 (Online) Vol. 5, No. 3, 2023 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls 62 Original Paper The Application of Etymological Stories in College English Vocabulary Teaching Liu Li 1* 1 Department of EDUCATION, BOZHO University, YINXING Street, BOZHOU, China * Liu Li, E-mail: 3484818713@qq.com Received: June 12, 2023 Accepted: July 18, 2023 Online Published: July 20, 2023 doi:10.22158/eltls.v5n3p62 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/eltls.v5n3p62 1. Introduction Vocabulary teaching and memory are still the main problems perplexing non-English major college students today, and vocabulary teaching is an unavoidable teaching content. British linguist D A Wilkins once said, “Without grammar, people can express very few things, but without vocabulary, people can’t express anything”. From this, we can see the status of vocabulary in English learning and expression. Students master and master English vocabulary to refine the wording and improve the efficiency of expression, for example: he lives in a friend’s home, at first the friend is very warm, but later changed. It can be translated as “He stayed at his friend’s home, at first, he was welcome, but later, things changed” but can also be translated as: “he overstayed his welcome at his friend’s home”. As an old Chinese saying goes, “Only when you enter a chapter can you export a chapter” is enough to see the importance of accumulating vocabulary. When it comes to English vocabulary teaching methods, students can describe several methods, such as root and affix memorization, context learning, or most students tend to use mechanical word memorization, which seems simple and efficient. In order to help students get rid of the mechanical memorization method, most teachers will use the root and affix teaching method to help students improve the efficiency of memorization. This teaching method can also be found in the textbook, supporting exercises: each unit of Word-building module is divided into three parts affix, suffix and root explanation. However, according to the teacher’s guidance, the students were able to write out the answers and the teacher developed more vocabulary. From the classroom observation, the students kept taking notes in class to add the relevant words added by the teacher. But after class, students can hardly remember the words they learned in class. The lack of interest in teachers’ root and affix teaching makes students fail to understand the relationship between roots and words, where roots come from, what etymology is, and why they can express a certain www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 5, No. 3, 2023 63 Published by SCHOLINK INC. meaning. There are rich British culture and history behind English vocabulary. If teachers ignore this step and directly expand vocabulary based on word roots, students will simply input and expand vocabulary due to their lack of understanding of word roots. However, students will not be able to guess the words they do not know in the reading test. Thus, the effect of guessing the meaning of a word based on its roots is undoubtedly increased the memory burden of students. However, the teaching of word roots and affixes by teachers supplements the original intention to make students draw inferences from one another and reduce the memory burden. If students understand the source of word roots and the etymology stories behind them, then the efficiency of learning and memorizing English roots and affixes is improved. Based on the problems found in teaching, such as lack of interest in root and affixes teaching and low efficiency of vocabulary teaching, this paper proposes to integrate etymology into word teaching so as to change the teaching status. 2. Core Concepts 2.1 Etymology Etymology, or etymology, is, as the name suggests, the origin of words. Etymology learning helps to memorize words and expand vocabulary; etymology learning helps to improve reading ability and language perception; and etymology learning helps to understand the connotation of British and American culture. Etymology is a branch of lexicology, who studies the origins of the words, historical development and the semantic change of subject. English is developed by the integration of many foreign words, among which Greek, Latin and French have a great influence on English. The most basic English vocabulary is composed of Anglo-Saxon words, mainly related to human life and natural environment and other aspects. 3. Examples of Etymology 3.1 Otco- In the old Roman calendar, at the earliest there was no January, February (January and February) these two months at that time “January” called “March” is also the realization of the March. It has to do with the history of the time, when March was also the month that Roman soldiers went out to war, it was November so the Romans named the month Mars after the god of war in order to protect themselves from victory; And March as a verb can mean to march, to march; Progress. Nymapilius reformed the old Roman calendar by adding January and February to October, then the last month of the year. And then it became the first and second month of the year and then August became October, which is why Octo actually means eight. Such as octopus, octopus, octagon, octagon, octonary-octal, octopod (eight-legged creature). That’s December. dec means ten years. decimal; decathlon. When it comes to the etymology and the word stories contained in the etymology, the teacher does not understand it because of the lack of related research on etymology itself. Some teachers believe that it is only necessary to teach students the roots and affixes of words to complete the teaching task. Therefore, www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 5, No. 3, 2023 64 Published by SCHOLINK INC. students lack the ability to guess the meaning of words according to the roots, which makes students still regard new words as the main obstacle in improving their reading speed and reading ability. 3.2 Pan- “Mr De” and “Mr Say” are the two most distinctive banners of the New Culture Movement. Mr De refers to the transliteration from “dem”, which means democracy and people. Like democracy, democratic parties; democratic; democratic. democratize is democratization, etc., so something that is widespread among the people is understood as a plague, a pandemic. When it comes to democracy, it has to involve cratic, which evolved from the Greek krato-cratos-crat-cratic to mean encouragement and domination. Therefore, we can find that the rule of aristocracy, the rule of bureaucracy and the rule of monks are aristocratic /reaucratic/hierocratic respectively. From this, we can find that words are interrelated with each other, and students can master the related affixes while remembering the roots of words. Students’ interest and curiosity can be stimulated under the motivation of stories. 3.3 The Etymological Story of Numbers When teaching vocabulary, teachers should follow the principle of being close to students’ life, and give examples of being close to students’ life, so that students can feel that English words are related to life, and they can also have access to English words outside of study. League of Legends is a popular game among college students, in this game, the most common words are one kill, two kill, three kill, four kill and five kill, two team three team and other related words. The official term for double kill is double kill, meaning double, two, and two. In English, t/d, k/g, p/b sound similar, so English will have a letter change in the process of evolution, so two and duo both have the meaning of “double, two, two”. And ble is related to ple, ple means multiple, several times, double, more meaning, especially in word formation such as triple, multiple and so on. duo has sometimes been interchangeable with dou, du, and dubious, for example, to indicate doubt, dubious, or dubious. Another triple, quadra and penta, including penta refers to five, has appeared on the news, such as the pentagon pentagon. The penta is from the Greek said pentagram (pentacle), ancient Egypt, The ancient Babylonians and Pythagoreans thought that it symbolized the birth of the “five cycles” and was a symbol of life and the future. pentagram (five-pointed star figure). When it comes to numbers, other common number words include uni, which means union/one/community. It comes from the Latin word for a number prefix, which means “one”, “only” and “single”. The most common derivatives of uni are unify, union and unit, the first two of which are derived from the combination of uni- and fy and -ion respectively. Like uni+cellular; uni+color; uni+axial represents unicellular, respectively. Monochromatic; Monophyllous; In junior high school history books, “The Joint declaration of the thirteen united states of America” was translated as The unanimous declaration of the thirteen united states of America. By unanimous, all of you agree. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 5, No. 3, 2023 65 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 4. Conclusion It can be concluded from the above cases that the integration of etymological stories in teaching can increase the fun of class, improve students’ learning interest and enthusiasm in listening to lectures, and at the same time increase students’ accumulation of English culture, cultivate students’ cross-cultural awareness and connotation, so that students can improve their cultural literacy while learning English to cope with the exam. This requires teachers to read English etymology books extensively to enrich their knowledge reserve when preparing lessons. Reference Chen, L. (2010). Root-affix associative memorization and its application in College English. Social Science Teaching, 2010(9), 28-29. Fu, Yuan-ting, & Sun, Chuan-hui. (2013). Introduction to etymology teaching in college English teaching and the application significance. Journal of hubei correspondence university, 166-167. Li, K. H., & Peng, Y. (2007). 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