Using Contextual Pragmatics in the Teaching of Polysemy among Foreign Students

Abstract

This study aims to apply contextualization in the teaching of vocabulary extensions. It argues that the introduction of vocabulary connects directly or indirectly and that systems can be found at the context level. Mandarin and “rice” were taught to two groups of international students from Asian universities; the experimental group was taught with the context system while the control group was taught with the traditional grammar translation method. The effect of contextualized teaching on vocabulary extension learning was then observed. Contextualization will benefit the learning of the extended meanings of words. An experiment was conducted to determine the learning effectiveness. The subjects of the study were international students from Asian universities, and the teaching materials were Mandarin phrases that were related to “mi” (?) and “fan” (?) (rice). The students were divided into two groups: the experimental group was introduced the context system and the other was taught using the grammar translation method. A post-test was held to determine whether contextualized teaching improves the learning effectiveness of extended meanings.