An Empirical Study On English Polysemous Words Teaching In Senior High School Based On Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Vocabulary is the important element of language and occupies a primary position inforeign language learning. In vocabulary, polysemy, referring to a word has two or moresenses, is a common phenomenon in English vocabulary. In high school English teaching,vocabulary contains a great portion of polysemies, especially some frequently-used nouns,verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc., which brings a lot of difficulties to students. In the traditionalEnglish teaching, the relationship among different senses of a polysemous word is consideredto be disparate. Therefore, generally, the teacher just gives one sense or simply lists all sensesof a polysemous word to students and requires them to memorize by rote. This kind ofteaching method results that students have difficulties in assure the right meaning ofvocabulary in certain context. Students cannot find a better method to memorize and utilizepolysemous words effectively. In the view of cognitive linguistics, metaphor is an importantway of the production and extension of meanings in language. Though a word may havemany senses, there is only one basic meaning, and the other senses are metaphoricallydeveloped from the basic meaning. The Conceptual Metaphor provides a new angle forEnglish polysemies teaching and learning.This paper applies the conceptual metaphor theory in the teaching of English polysemouswords, aiming to explore a new English polysemy teaching method and improve students’polysemous words learning effect. This paper uses the questionnaire and empirical method,taking90high school students as research subjects for four months of contrastive teachingresearch. This study mainly puts forward and discusses the following three questions:(1) What are the main problems for senior high school students in their learning ofpolysemous words?(2) How to apply the conceptual metaphor theory into the teaching of polysemous wordsin senior high school effectively in the hope of improving students’ learning effectiveness ofpolysemous words?(3) What improvements can the teaching method based on the conceptual metaphortheory make for students in their learning of polysemous words?According to the statistic analysis of the data from the questionnaire and two tests, thisstudy verifies the the possibility and availability of applying conceptual metaphor theory intoEnglish polysemy teaching and draws the following conclusions:(1) There exist big problemsfor high school students in their learning strategy and memorizing effect of polysemous words. Most students memorize the polysemous words by cram or only remember one common-usedmeaning of a polysemous word.(2) Explaining the metaphorical relationships of differentsenses of one word explicitly does improve students’ learning effectiveness of polysemouswords.(3) The improvements for students in their learning of polysemous words are mainlydemonstrated in improving the students’abilities to apply words, deepening their long-termmemory of various lexical meanings of polysemous words, cultivating students’ metaphoricalcompetence and ability to find the appropriate metaphorical relationships among differentmeanings of polysemies. Finally, this paper discusses the implications of the study and putsforward some pedagogical suggestions for polysemous words teaching, in the hope ofimproving the teaching effect of English polysemous words in senior high school.