Teaching Research Of College English Polysemy Based On Cognitive Linguistics

Polysemy is one of major difficulties in college English teaching and learning. As a common phenomenon in language, English polysemy accounts for a large proportion in vocabulary, especially some high-frequency words which uaually have more senses. Therefore, to a large extent, whether students can understand and remember English polysemy effectively determines the success of their vocabulary learning. The study of traditional linguistics on polysemy has a long history, but their studies are mainly limited to the internal structure of the language; in polysemy teaching practice, teachers either list major meanings of the target words supplemented by examples to explain, or require students to guess appropriate meanings of the words encountered in the specific context. Both of them are lack of systematism so that they are not so useful to students’ understanding and remembering English polysemy. In recent years, the rise and development of cognitive linguistics offer us a new direction for the analysis of polysemy. Based on the prototype category theory and metaphor theory of cognitive linguisties, the present thesis conducted a comparative experiment among college students intended to explore a more effective approach to English polysemy teaching by analyzing the semantic associations between the prototypical meaning and other meanings of the polysemous words. The paper attempted to answer the following questions:Firstly, compared with the traditional method, whether the new polysemy teaching approach based on prototype category theory and metaphor theory can effectively promote students’ short-term retention and long-term retention of English polysemy. Secondly, whether the impacts of this new polysemy teaching approach on students’ short-term and long-term retention of polysemy are the same or not. If not, is it more beneficial to short-term retention or long-term retention? Thirdly, in comparison with the traditional method, whether the new polysemy teaching approach can improve students’ interests and involvement ability so as to better facilitate English polysemy teaching and learning.This empirical research set undergraduates as subjects, and the experiment class was instructed with the new polysemy teaching approach while the control class was guided by the conventional teaching method. The data are mainly from the vocabulary tests and records of interview, and then SPSS16.0software was used to make horizontal and vertical comparative analyses of vocabulary tests, drawing the following related conclusions:To begin with, compared with the traditional method, the new polysemy teaching approach based on prototype category theory and metaphor theory can promote students’ short-term retention and long-term retention of English polysemy. Moreover, the new polysemy teaching approach is more beneficial to students’ long-term retention of English polysemy than the short-term retention. Finally, in comparison with the traditional method, the new polysemy teaching approach can improve students’ interests and involvement ability a great deal so as to better promote English polysemy teaching and learning.The study aimed to combine some related theories of cognitive linguistics and college English polysemy teaching practice to a certain extent so as to explore a more effective polysemy teaching approach. Hopefully, it will contribute to the future polysemy teaching practice.