How Chinese EFL learners acquire the secondary meanings of words: effect of practice types and semantic relevance

This study examines how native Chinese speakers learn secondary meanings of English vocabulary, with a focus on word meaning types (polysemous words and homonyms) and learning activities (flashcards and fill-in-the-blank exercises). A controlled experimental design was adopted, in which learners completed learning tasks followed by immediate and delayed post-tests measuring recognition accuracy and reaction time. The result show lexical meaning type did not lead to differences in final learning outcomes. However, differences emerged in the learning process: homonyms tended to support better immediate recognition, whereas polysemous words showed relatively faster retrieval in delayed processing. Both instructional conditions improved performance compared with their respective control groups, but their effects were mainly observed in immediate testing and did not consistently persist over time. The findings suggest that both lexical meaning types and learning activities shape the temporal course of secondary meaning acquisition rather than final attainment. Flashcards appear more effective for acquiring initial form–meaning links, while contextualized tasks may facilitate early semantic processing, although neither approach showed a sustained advantage in retention over a one-week delay.