An Empirical Study On College English Polysemy Teaching Based On Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Polysemy is an universal phenomenon in language; however, it is seen as the cornerstone in the process of English teaching and learning as the present polysemy teaching method is usually time-consuming and inefficient. Thus, it is necessary to find an effective method of improving the acquisition of polysemy.Since the publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By in 1980, metaphor has been considered as a cognitive phenomenon of human beings rather than a poetic or ornament language in ancient times. Besides, metaphor is considered to be a cognitive process that people could understand abstract concepts with the help of concrete concepts. From cognitive linguistic point of view, metaphor (also known as conceptual metaphor) is omnipresent in our language and it can structure, form and conceptualize our cognitive process. As what Lakoff and Jonson put forward, nearly 70% of our daily languages are metaphorical in nature (1980). Therefore, many scholars begin to explore the practical application of conceptual metaphor to English teaching.Moreover, conceptual metaphor provides a new insight for English vocabulary learning, such as prepositions, idioms and phrasal verbs. However, few studies focus on applying conceptual metaphor theory to the acquisition of polysemous words, especially for content polysemous words like nouns, verbs and adjectives. There still has space for researcher to investigate on the feasibility of teaching polysemous words from conceptual metaphor perspective. Thus, this paper tries to conduct an empirical research on applying conceptual metaphor theory to actual English polysemous words teaching by revealing the systematic and metaphoric correlations among polysemous senses.Based on conceptual metaphor theory, this thesis aims to testify the efficiency and feasibility of applying conceptual metaphor theory to English polysemous words teaching and learning.This empirical study chooses some content words, namely nouns, verbs and adjectives as the target words, and it is conducted among 100 non-English major of the second grade students from two parallel classes. The students are from the School of Management and the School of Physics and Electronic Engineering in Beifang University of Nationalities. The two parallel classes are divided randomly into the experimental class (EC for short) and the controlled class (CC for short). Students in CC learn polysemy based on common grammar-translation approach, while students in EC learn polysemy based on conceptual metaphor theory. After 14 weeks’ empirical study, the comparison is made between the two classes by means of the results and analyses from two questionnaires, eight polysemy tests and an interview.The results indicate that: 1 The polysemy teaching method based on conceptual metaphor theory does facilitate students’ long-term retention of polysemy; 2 The polysemy teaching method based on conceptual metaphor theory is more efficient than common polysemy teaching approach in polysemy learning and application; 3 The conceptual metaphor theory has a positive effect on changing learners’ attitudes towards further polysemy learning.