Effects Of Three Modes Of Glossing On Incidental Polysemous Words' Acquisition

The aim of this thesis is to examine the effects of three ways of glossing on the retention of polysemous words. The author seeks to offer some suggestions to the modes of glossing on polysemous words and ways of teaching polysemous words.The author first gives some brief introduction to polysemy and then discusses the motivation of polysemy mainly from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. According to cognitive linguists, periphery senses are derived from core sense by way of metaphor and metonymy. Theories of depth of processing, Semantic mapping, involvement hypothesis etc. are theoretical foundations of this thesis. Then the experiment is introduced, which includes research questions, hypotheses, participants, procedure, results etc.Subjects are students of Zibo Teacher's College who major in English and are of the same English level. The independent variable is learning condition (3 kinds: gloss with contextual periphery sense, gloss with core sense and contextual periphery sense, gloss with contextual periphery sense and another periphery sense). Dependent variable is the retention of polysemous words (including short term and long term retention). Data are collected and then analyzed with SPSS. Results indicate that: 1. of the three groups, subjects retain polysemous words best when being provided with core sense and contextual periphery sense in both STM and LTM; 2. the groups provided with two senses gain more words than the group provided with one sense. 3. Polysemous words'short term retention and long term retention are closely related.The author then gives explanations to the results of the test. Pedagogical and practical implications for Chinese English learners are also drawn and suggestions are made for polysemous words'teaching in China.