Implications of the polysemous network in teaching English spaitial particles: In and On

• Main Authors: Yi-Chen Ho, 何宜蓁
• Other Authors: Ying-Hsueh Hu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/12883674321881459131

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 英文學系碩士班 === 95 === Spatial particles (SP) are inherently polysemous items, which have multiple and related senses. Those various senses, which can be represented by the systematic network, are generated from the physical and spatial interaction with the world. That is, multiple senses are radiated from the central node which is regarded as the prototypical meaning (i.e. prototype) (Brugman & Lakoff, 1988; Langacker, 1987; Lindstromberg, 1996 & 1998; Johnson, 1987; Sweetser, 1998; Tyler & Evans, 2003; Evans, 2006). The pedagogical implication of the polysemous network in teaching and learning L2 spatial particles has found to be meaningful (Boer & Demecheeler, 1998; Lam, 2003). The present study is inspired by those previous implications and try to investigate the utility of the polysemous network of in and on from their prototypical meanings to extended meanings with the image schemas in enhancing learners’ spatial-particle comprehension. Two groups of subjects (N=93) were taught the multiple senses of in and on. One group received the polysemy-network approach (PN group) in which each sense was introduced by image schema, while the other group received the none-network approach (NN group) in which each sense was introduced by the image without teaching the interrelatedness among senses. The experiment lasted for two months. The statistical results show that although the PN group did not perform significantly better than NN group in the post-test and the delayed post-test after the instruction. However, the verbal think-aloud protocol administered in four months later demonstrated that subjects in the PN group retained the network knowledge significantly longer than subjects in NN group. Also, subjects in the NN group showed that they could resort to some inherently basic image-schema knowledge but did not know how to use the certain knowledge systematically in the extended meanings. Therefore, L2 learners found it was harder to acquire those culturally specific schemas when learners made not aware of the interrelated schemas denoting by the polysemous words in and on.