A Study On The Effects Of Conceptual Metaphor Instruction On The Semantic Acquisition Of Polysemy Off

Polysemous words are an important part of English vocabulary,and their meanings are flexible in different contexts,which makes it difficult for EFL learners to fully grasp.Since the 1970 s,with the development of cognitive linguistics,many researchers have started their attempt at applying cognitive linguistics theories into English teaching.As one of the theories of cognitive linguistics,conceptual metaphor explores the nature of human language and has held the attention of many researchers.Although the empirical researches from the perspective of conceptual metaphor have made some achievements,most of them are based on primary and middle school students,while the researches on college students are relatively limited.Therefore,this study was designed to investigate whether the input of some conceptual metaphor knowledge in teaching vocabulary is conducive to the learning of polysemous words for college students.The present study aims to answer the following three questions:1)Can conceptual metaphor-based vocabulary teaching improve the learners’ efficiency of grasping the meaning of off?2)Can conceptual metaphor-based vocabulary teaching promote learners’ short-term and long-term memory?3)Can the learners learn strategies and improve their ability to infer the meaning of words through the conceptual metaphorical vocabulary teaching of off and successfully transfer the ability to the learning process of other polysemous words?In the present study,100 non-English major freshmen of a comprehensive university were chosen as the subjects.All the subjects are native Chinese speakers and have studied English for at least seven years without overseas study experience.The experimental group was conducted by the conceptual metaphor-based vocabulary teaching,while the control group took the traditional one.The experiment lasted for 12 weeks.The data collected from the experiment were analyzed by the software SPSS 26.0.The results of the experiment show that metaphor-based vocabulary teaching has a positive effect on students’ polysemy learning.It can promote students’ short-term and long-term memory,change students’ vocabulary learning strategies and improve their inference ability.Based on the results of the study,some pedagogical implications were provided for English teachers.Firstly,English teachers can explain the prototype meaning at first,and then explain the expansion of the meanings of a word based on metaphor,thereby improving the efficiency of students’ word acquisition.Secondly,English teachers should devote themselves to cultivating students’ cross-cultural competence,and enhancing students’ understanding of metaphorical meanings in different cultural contexts.Thirdly,teachers should develop students’ metaphorical competence.