Akademik amaçlı İngilizce bağlamında çok anlamlı sözcüklerin öğretilmesine yönelik bilişsel dil bilimine dayalı bir yaklaşım

Having rich vocabulary plays a critical role for language learners in order for them to be proficient in academic settings. They need to be adept at learning lexical items to be able to acquire and expand their vocabulary knowledge. However, they often struggle with the challenges posed by lexical items such as polysemous words due to their differences in meaning and correct context use across languages. Cognitive Linguistics claims that language is not arbitrary, on the contrary, it is governed by the embodiment of human experiences in the physical world and these experiences and abstract thoughts are expressed metaphorically in languages. The same principle can be applied to how polysemous words are created. Most of the time the other senses of the polysemous words are motivated from their core meaning. According to Cognitive Linguistics, this relationship between a polysemous word's senses can be demonstrated by analyzing image schemas these words represent. For this reason, the present mixed method study claims that if polysemous words are taught from a Cognitive Linguistic based approach, the relationship between the core meaning and the related meanings of the polysemous words will be possible to be perceived easily and can be retained longer. The purpose of this study is to compare two pedagogical approaches for teaching English polysemous words, which are teaching vocabulary through translation and teaching vocabulary based on Cognitive Linguistic approaches. This study was conducted with preparatory school students from different countries (n=22) in one of the private universities in Turkey. The participants were divided into a control and an experimental group in equal numbers. The control group received traditional vocabulary teaching based on translation for the target polysemous words while the experimental group was taught based on the image-schema approach and metaphor association. Although there are a lot of available vocabulary tests for many purposes, there were no readily available data collection measures that were applicable to this research's context. That's why all the data gathering tools were specifically created for this research by the researcher. Over the course of 8 weeks, a diagnostic vocabulary test, cross-sectional survey, polysemous vocabulary test applied in pre, post and follow-up design and a semi- structured interview were conducted to gather the data. Quantitative and qualitative data results show that teaching polysemous words by using image-schemas and metaphor association between the core meaning of the words and their related meanings facilitate better learning and retention.