A Study Of Polysemy Teaching Based On Conceptual Blending Theory In Senior High Schools

Polysemy is the characteristic of a single word which has two or more distinct but related senses.It is a common phenomenon in natural language.Within the vast array of new cognitive linguistics of polysemy construction,there exist a variety of assumptions and frameworks on image schema theory,metaphor and metonymy,categorization theory,etc.However,previous studies failed to analyze the dynamic on-line process of meaning construction and there was a vacancy in the effectiveness test of polysemy teaching based on related theories.To compensate for the limitations of previous researches,this thesis adopts Conceptual Blending Theory(CBT)into polysemy teaching in senior high school,so as to test the effectiveness of the new teaching method based on CBT as well as to explain thoroughly how the senses of polysemy construct through on-line blending processes.Four questions are raised in this thesis.Firstly,what is the current situation of students' English polysemy learning? Secondly,what effects does the CBT-based polysemy teaching method have on students' understanding of different senses of polysemous words? Thirdly,what effects does the CBT-based polysemy teaching method have on students' long-term retention of polysemy? Fourthly,how much can the CBT-based polysemy teaching method improve students' ability of independent polysemy learning?The research starts from the questionnaire about the current situation of student's polysemy.The obvious characteristics are concluded as the following: Firstly,students consider polysemy common in language but difficult to master.Secondly,it is of low effect to recite polysemy by rote.Thirdly,they realize that there exist relations between different senses and they are so curious about the relations and the effective way to explain polysemy.The experiment is conducted in two classes of the similar polysemy learning level taught by the author.The experimental class(EC)is instructed with the new polysemy teaching approach while the control class(CC)is guided by the conventional teaching method.The data are collected from thepolysemous words tests and then SPSS 17.0 software is used to make horizontal and vertical comparative analyses of these tests.The findings of this thesis are demonstrated as follows.Firstly,after two months instruction,the mean score of posttest 1 in the EC is 10.93% higher than that of the CC and the value of Sig.is0.017.It suggests compared with the traditional method,the new polysemy teaching approach based on CBT is effective in polysemy teaching.Secondly,two weeks later,the mean score of posttest 2 in the EC is 36.28% higher than that of the CC and the value of Sig.is 0.000.It supports the idea that the new polysemy teaching approach is more beneficial to students' long-term retention.Thirdly,a month later,the mean score of posttest 3 in the EC is 6.29% higher than that of the CC and the value of Sig.is 0.030.It means that in comparison with the traditional method,the new polysemy teaching approach can improve students' independent learning capability.Furthermore,the paired-sample test value of Sig.in the EC is 0.032 while the pairedsample test value of Sig.in the CC is 0.539.It gives evidence that the new polysemy teaching approach makes a big difference to the experimental class while the conventional teaching method doesn't have the same effect on the control class.In general,the research enriches the empirical support of polysemy teaching based on CBT.It provides both theoretical and practical guidance for polysemy teaching in senior high school.To some extent,it has advanced teaching techniques and learning methods.It has analyzed the semantic and grammatical changes in monocategorial and intercategorial polysemy,which explained the semantic conceptual relationship,as well as the changes in word category.This thesis has probed into a new polysemy teaching model and explored a path for future research.