A Study On The Teaching Of English Polysemy In Senior High School From The Perspective Of Prototype Category Theory

Polysemy means that a word has two or more meanings.The emergence of the polysemy not only reduces the number of words,enriches the meaning of words,but also meets the requirements of vocabulary diversification in communication.In addition,the mastery of polysemy is an important standard to measure the language ability of second language learners.However,influenced by traditional structuralism linguistics,it overemphasizes the structure of vocabulary but ignores the internal relationships among the meanings of polysemy,which results in the following deficiencies in English polysemy teaching: Firstly,most teachers guide students to acquire polysemy by rote or guessing the meaning through context so that few of them pay attention to the internal relationships among the meanings of polysemy;Secondly,most teachers only focus on the expansion of vocabulary in breadth but don’t strengthen the acquisition of vocabulary in depth.Actually,mastering the different meanings of polysemy is a significant way to strengthen vocabulary acquisition in depth.Thirdly,as students learn polysemy mechanically and sporadically,it increases their burden for polysemy memorization.As a result,students remember the different meanings of polysemy temporarily.Due to the above problems,based on the prototype category theory of cognitive linguistic,which emphasizes the relationships between the prototypical meaning and the marginal meaning of the semantic category of polysemy,as well as the meaning extension of polysemy,the following research questions are put forward in this paper:(1)What is the current status of students’ polysemy learning in senior high school? After the experiment,is there any improvement about this status?(2)Can the teaching method based on prototype category theory facilitate students’ retention for polysemous words?(3)Can the teaching method based on prototype category theory promote students’ ability of autonomous analysisand autonomous learning for polysemy?This paper takes two parallel classes in the second grade of Longquan Middle School,with a total of 72 students as the research subjects.Before the experiment,one pre-questionnaire and one test were carried out to investigate students’ attitude and actual acquisition condition of polysemy.During the experiment,the prototype category theory was applied to teach polysemy in experimental class,and the traditional method was used in controlled class.Four mid-tests were carried out in the experiment.After the experiment,one polysemy test was carried out for experimental class and controlled class respectively,one interview and one post questionnaire(the same one as the pre-questionnaire)just for experimental class.The data obtained were analyzed by Excel 2010 and SPSS 22.0 software.Based on the results of data analysis,the following conclusions were drawn: Firstly,the teaching method based on prototype category theory can arouse students’ interests and change students’ learning attitudes towards polysemy;Secondly,the teaching method based on prototype category theory is beneficial to the promotion of short-term and long-term memory of students for polysemy.Thirdly,the teaching method based on prototype category theory is helpful to enhance students’ ability to analyze the relationships among the different meanings of polysemy by themselves.The research results show that the teaching method based on the prototype category theory has certain positive influence on polysemy teaching in senior high school,and it can provide a new teaching angle for the teaching of polysemous words,and shed light on some enlightenment for the future polysemy teaching.