An Empirical Study On The Teaching Of Polysemous Words

The application of cognitive metaphor theory into the teaching of polysemous words has attracted much attention in the field of Second Language Acquisition and its significant efficiency has been proved by many publications on this topic. Scholars in China have also made due contribution in this new field but their works lacks coverage on learners with intermediate proficiency.The present paper investigated whether explicit classroom teaching of metaphoric extensions of different senses of polysemous words can facilitate the intermediate-proficiency-level Chinese English learners’learning of vocabulary. Empirical research was done in the senior high school environment by comparing the effects between two different vocabulary teaching approaches, i.e. cognitive linguistic inspired metaphoric approach and traditional L1translation approach.118Chinese EFL high school students were divided into two groups and tested on their immediate comprehension and long-term retention of vocabulary knowledge acquired through the above mentioned different approaches.The data collected are analyzed through SPSS16.0and findings obtained are as follows:1) compared with traditional approach to polysemy teaching, metaphoric approach can better facilitate the learning of L2vocabulary for intermediate level English learners in both the short term comprehension and long-term retention.2)The recognition of the fact that senses of polysemous words are metaphorically motivated does not turn into a strategy that students employ autonomously in future studies to help comprehension and memorization.3) One time introduction of the metaphoric extensions of senses of polysemous words is not sufficient enough for L2learners to build up a metaphoric conceptual system in their mind to facilitate autonomous learning.