An Empirical Study On English Polysemy Learning Of Vocational High School Students From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Nowadays,vocational education is highly promoted,and more and more students and parents choose vocational education.The development of vocational education must then be strongly encouraged.Learning polysemous words is a significant challenge even though teaching vocabulary is a crucial component of teaching foreign languages.The traditional vocabulary teaching approach does not assist students in understanding the relationship between the meanings of polysemous terms.Students find it challenging to master polysemous terms in order to pass the test as a result.Conceptual metaphor theory is widely used by teachers in the field of English vocabulary,especially in the teaching of polysemy.By learning conceptual metaphor theory,students can connect the meanings of polysemy with each other,which makes the study of polysemy interesting and efficient.Therefore,conceptual metaphor theory provides a new perspective for vocational high school students to learn polysemous words.Under the guidance of conceptual metaphor theory,this study applies metaphorical thinking ability to vocational high school students’ polysemy learning,and explores the influence of conceptual metaphor theory on students’ polysemy learning.So,the author puts forward three questions:1.What problems do vocational high school students encounter in learning polysemy?2.Can conceptual metaphor theory solve the problems encountered by vocational high school students in the process of learning polysemy?3.What aspects of the conceptual metaphor theory can aid students in promoting their skills? In particular,have the ability of discourse comprehension,comprehensible vocabulary and productive vocabulary been improved?The author chooses two classes of senior two in Datong,Shanxi Province as the research subjects.The number of students in each class is equal,and their English proficiency is comparable.The author gathers a significant amount of data and resources over the 8-week experimental investigation using literature retrieval,questionnaire surveys,and other research techniques.The survey and other test data are analyzed using SPSS 25.0 and Excel office software.Through teaching research,the author draws the following conclusions.First of all,vocational high school students have more challenges than regular students when learning polysemous words.Second,incorporating the theory of conceptual metaphor into the study of polysemous is an effective method to help students develop metaphor thinking ability and expand the knowledge of polysemous.Thirdly,through the use of instructional experiments,students’ vocabulary,both productive and receptive vocabulary and their ability to comprehend discourse,are all improved.To some extent,conceptual metaphor theory enhances students’ ability to master vocabulary as well as their motivation in learning English.The findings of this teaching experiment can be used to fill in teaching gaps in English polysemy in vocational high schools,improve the methods that students learn polysemy in the classes,stimulate their curiosity about what they are learning,and improve their vocabulary acquisition strategies.