An Investigation On The Learning Of Polysemous Words Among Junior High School Students

As we all know,vocabulary is one of the three core elements of language,and the meaning of words is the most fundamental object of study in vocabulary.Words,as the backbone of all other skills in the language system,are the basic elements of language development.The acquisition of vocabulary in the target language is a major part of learning a foreign language.And vocabulary ability determines,to a certain extent,the level of practical use(listening,speaking,reading,writing,translating,etc.)of the language learner.Because of the special status of vocabulary in the language system,improving the acquisition of vocabulary is the first task to enhance the language ability of second language learners.Polysemy,a word containing two or more senses,is a common phenomenon in natural language,and research and teaching about it have been paid much attention.However,the teaching of polysemous words has been a challenge and has not been effectively broken through for a long time.In recent years,there have been more empirical studies on multiple-meaning word learning,but fewer studies on the current situation.In this paper,we investigate the current situation of polysemy word learning,analyze the possible reasons for the learning,and finally put forward some feasible suggestions.The study helps to enrich the vocabulary pedagogy and provide scientific theoretical guidance for the teaching of multiple-meaning words in junior high school English.The two questions of the study are as follows.(1)How well do students master polysemous words?(2)What is the current situation of learning polysemous words in junior high school students? Are they active in learning? Have they learned learning strategies?In this paper,300 students and 10 teachers of Mudanjiang S Middle School were studied,and questionnaires,interviews,and vocabulary ability tests were used to investigate the mastery of polysemous words and their current learning situation.The survey showed that the mastery of polysemous words was not good,and most students understood the learning method and had a positive learning attitude,but the learning results were not good.(1)the students have a positive attitude towards learning polysemous words;(2)in the process of learning polysemous words,most of the students are willing to understand the learning methods,but do not have good practical ability;(3)at present,middle school students have a general knowledge of polysemy,which is difficult to analyze in the context of certainty.Through communication with teachers,the reasons for this phenomenon are as follows:(1)in polysemy learning,learners often simply understand the meaning of words in a certain context but ignore the prototypical meaning of words;(2)students pay little attention to the use of polysemous words in the process of learning,while using traditional methods to memorize polysemous words;(3)in the teaching of reading,teachers just explain some polysemous words directly and then do exercises,but they seldom combine semantic knowledge to explain polysemous words.The study suggests that teachers should,on the one hand,improve the way they teach vocabulary and adopt effective teaching methods that stimulate students’ active knowledge of vocabulary concepts;on the other hand,they should develop students’ awareness of strengthening their own cognitive abilities.The learning of polysemous terms is based on comprehensive linguistic and conceptual knowledge.Therefore,in the process of learning polysemous words,students must pay attention to the mastery of vocabulary concepts and the cultivation of cognitive ability,and constantly enrich their conceptual knowledge in order to truly achieve the effective learning of semantic knowledge of vocabulary.