Sense Categorization of Polysemy by Japanese EFL Learners: The Influences of Extensive Reading

Abstract

　　The purpose of this study was to investigate whether Japanese EFL learners’ mental lexicons of polysemous basic words changed following a three-month extensive reading. Fifty-four Japanese university students classified polysemous words into sense groups, and these groups were then compared with the categorizations provided by an English-Japanese dictionary. Between the pre- and post-sense categorization tasks, the participants engaged in extensive reading for three months. The data of the pre- and post-tasks were compared from the viewpoint of the participants’ vocabulary sizes and the amount of reading they had done (the number of words read). The results demonstrated that vocabulary size was influential on the polysemy mental lexicon for only some of the target words, and that the amount of reading did not affect the mental lexicon at all. These results suggest that (a) a three-month extensive reading could not change the sense categorizations of polysemous words by Japanese EFL learners; and (b) vocabulary size could not always affect the structures of the mental lexicon concerning polysemous senses. Finally, two pedagogical implications were discussed from the viewpoint of implicit and explicit vocabulary learning.