Analyzing the Acquisition of English Polysemy of Chinese High School Students: a Quantitative Study

Abstract

The study explores the acquisition of English polysemy by senior high school students and two factors that will have an influence on students’ acquisition of English polysemy, which include part of speech and meaning frequency. The participants are 148 Chinese senior high school students who are involved in a test including 30 English polysemous words within the scope of senior high school learning. The results show that: (1) there is no correlation between students’ examination scores in school and their scores on the polysemy test; (2) students tend to master verb polysemy better than adjective polysemy and adjective polysemy better than noun polysemy; (3) students have a better command of the most frequent meanings of polysemy than the less frequent ones, whereas there are some special cases. According to the results, suggestions are put forward for senior three students to learn polysemous words and teachers to teach polysemous words, which can better help students in the acquisition of polysemous words, improving the vocabulary learning efficiency.