A Study Of English Polysemy Teaching Based On Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Vocabulary teaching is the focus of foreign language teaching, while polysemy is the difficulty of vocabulary teaching. Polysemy is quite common in any language. It is said that more than40%words are polysemous words and have more than one meaning. Generally speaking, the higher frequency of a word uses, the more meanings it will have. It’s a big burden for the learners to acquire polysemous words in vocabulary learning. Therefore, teaching of polysemy is worth studying.Lakoff and Johnson hold that metaphor is very common in everyday life. They consider that metaphor is not only a figure of speech, but also a way of thinking or cognitive mechanism. Metaphor is the mapping of one conceptual domain to another and is a mean of understanding one thing in terms of another. The theory provides a new perspective of polysemy teaching. According to conceptual metaphor, a word may have several meanings, but it only has one basic meaning, and other meanings are created or extended by the basic meaning, or we can say they are metaphorical meanings. Conceptual metaphor can help learners discover and master the relations between the different meanings of a polysemous word, through the mastering of the basic meaning, activation of the concept of metaphor in their mind, and then find the metaphorical meanings of polysmeous words and master the different meanings of polusmeous words.In order to explore the feasibility and validity of applying conceptual metaphor into polysemy teaching, the thesis tries to answer the following two questions:1. Can the polysemy teaching method based on conceptual metaphor facilitate the understanding of English polysemy learning?2. Compared with the traditional teaching method, is the polysemy teaching method based on conceptual metaphor have better effect on the learners’ long-term memory of polysmeous words?This study adopts the method of experimental research. The subjects in two groups are all from Guangdong Radio and Television University majoring in English. One class was randomly selected as the control group in which traditional vocabulary teaching is conducted, while the other was selected as the experimental group where conceptual metaphor theory is applied. The students are taught to know the relationship between metaphor and polysemous words and then grasp the different meanings of polysemous words. The empirical research includes a pretest, classroom teaching experiments, two posttests and a questionnaire. The data of the experiment is analyzed by the SPSS11.5.The results of the experiment were:the data analysis showed that there is no significant difference between the two classes’vocabulary level and the knowledge of conceptual metaphor theory before the experiment, thus the experiment is feasible. But after the whole teaching experiment, the experimental group did much better in the posttests than the control group. That is to say, the application of conceptual metaphor theory into polysemy teaching can facilitate the students’understanding of polysemous words, and the long-term memory of polysemy learning is better than traditional teaching method. In addition, the results of the questionnaire reveal that, with an increasing interest in English polysemy learning, students in the experimental class hold a positive attitude towards the polysemy teaching based on conceptual metaphor theory, while most students in the control class hold an indifferent attitude towards the traditional methods and even think the methods are complex and bored except a few ones who have good background knowledge of the traditional methods. The results conclude that the English polysemy teaching based on conceptual metaphor theory is better than the traditional teaching method. And the writer hopes that this study will contribute to the implication of English polysemy teaching and learning to some extent.