| Polysemy, which is defined as two or more different but related senses being associated with one linguistic form (Cuyckens & Britta,2001), is a general phenomenon in human language. And it represents a convenient and economic way for people to reflect the constant changes in the world than creating new words and borrowing words from foreign languages. According to Byrd et al (1987), out of approximately 60,000 entries in Webster's Seventh Dictionary,21,488, or almost 40% have two or more senses. Moreover, the most commonly used words tend to be the most polysemous. The word "run", for example, has 29 senses in Webster's, further divided into 125 sub-senses. However, it causes great difficulty for second language learners since most of meanings of the polysemous words should be derived with figuratively means. Bensoussan and Laufer (1984) observe that, it is especially difficult for learners to understand and learn different senses of one word and learners do not tend to give up one particular meaning of a word they are familiar with, even though that word does not make sense in the context in which it occurrs (Laufer,1997). Yet the vocabulary learning is the central part of SLA (Lewis, 1993), then the polysemous words learning will be the most important part in language teaching and learning. But the author, who teaches English at college with 9 years' working experience, notices that little attention is paid on the polysemous words. Moreover, the learners have great difficulties in mastering polysemous words:they do not adopt certain learning strategies and only know one or two frequent used meanings of one polyseme with a separated relation in their mind. Thus, the learners often can not fit the "known" meaning into the context when conducting listening comprehension and reading comprehension. Then what kind of teaching methods should the teachers use in polysemous words teaching? What kind of learning strategies should the students use in polysemous words learning? All these are needed to be solved.Actually, the common way of teaching words in China is to read the new word, translate it into source language, analyze its structure, explain its grammatical use, and conduct drills on translation and sentence construction. As for the EFL learners, they only remember endless lists of vocabulary by rote. Thus, the result of learning normal vocabulary is not satisfactory, let alone polysemous words learning. Moreover, with the reformation of English Education, (such as emphasis on natural L2 acquisition, cancellation of the section of vocabulary in CET-4 and CET-6), the teachers' focus on the instruction of words gradually begins to transfer from intensive explanation of new words to extensive teaching. It becomes more difficult for students to master the word meanings.As the fundamental theories of Categorization in Cognitive Linguistics, the prototype theory not only offers a new motivation to polysemy but also provides a new way in polysemous words teaching and learning. The prototype theory is developed by Rosch after her study and other linguists' investigations of color terminology and kinship systems (Berlin & Kay,1969; Labov,1973; Lakoff,1987; Rosch,1971,1977; Taylor, 1989; Wittgenstein,1942,1945,1953). According to Rosch, the prototype is the most representative or central and typical members, or the best and salient example in a given category. Namely, she finds out that people name typical or best member more efficiently than atypical ones, and the typical one can be acquired by children first; the categories are formed around the best or typical ones—prototype, which function as cognitive reference points; and the relationship among members is kind of family resemblance. From the angle of prototype theory, the meanings of one polyseme are considered a category with the central (core) meaning being the prototype of the category. The meanings of a polyseme show a family resemblance and non-prototypical meanings (senses) are derived from the prototypical meaning motivated by two general principles-metaphor and metonymy. Besides, three models can be used to show different meanings' relation-radiation, concatenation, and half-radiation.The prototype theory provides an effective way for polysemous words understanding and remembering. According to the motivation of prototype theory in polysemy, only understanding and remembering the core sense will help learners to infer the meaning in a given context by using context clues and two figurative means—metaphor and metonymy. Therefore, the teachers can adopt the prototype theory in polysemous words teaching. Considering the difficulties of Chinese EFL learners in polysemous words learning and the characteristics of prototype theory, the author conducts an empirical research to investigate the present condition of polysemous words teaching and learning, and the effect of two kinds of teaching approaches on polysemous words learning. The thesis aims at answering following questions:1) What methods do Chinese college English teachers use in polysemous words teaching?2) What strategies do Chinese college non-English majors take in polysemous words learning?3) What is the gap between the teachers'teaching expectation and students'learning condition on polysemous words acquisition?4) Of the teaching approach based on the prototype theory and the commonly used approach, which one is more efficient for polysemous words acquisition?The experiment holds four steps:method used in this study include four steps:first, the subjects—two intact classes and 29 teachers from LUT, conduct questionnaire, and a pretest is carried out in two classes; secondly, the author teaches the chosen polysemous words following the teaching schedule with two different teaching approaches; third, a posttest and questionnaire are carried out after the experiment; fourth, the author conducts an interview with 5 teachers to further check the gap between the teachers'expectation and students'learning condition on polysemous words acquisition.In data collection and analysis, SPSS 17.0 and Excel are used and the findings are gotten as follows:1) Referring to the teaching methods reviewed by Sokmen (1997), the most adopted teaching methods by Chinese English teachers is the mixture of the grammar translation and other methods, such as word unit analysis, integrating the new word with the old, encouraging independent study, providing the synonyms and antonyms and enough encounter of the common used meanings of the polyseme. Besides, the oral practice and test are the lowest used method in polysemous words teaching. 2) Among Schmitt's system of vocabulary learning strategies (1997), determination strategy, social strategy, memory strategy, cognitive strategy, metacognitive strategy, the most used strategy by the students is cognitive strategy followed by determination strategy, while memory strategy and social strategy is seldom used.3) Although most teachers interviewed are unaware of the prototype theory, they will use some principles of the prototype theory to teach polysemous words. For example, they will explain the relation bvetween the meanings of one polyseme but not give information about the concept of prototype theory and its approach to polysemy (core meaning, metaphor, metonymy).4) The teaching method based on the prototype theory is more effective for the polysemous words learning than the commonly used one. |
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