Semantic Distribution of Polysemous Verbs in Junior High School English Textbooks in Japan

This paper reports how the polysemous word TAKE is treated in the junior high school textbooks in Japan and its semantic distributions. Also, it looks into the ways in which Japanese junior high school students actually use TAKE in their compositions and analyses its semantic distributions in their writings. This paper uses the BBC 500 Word essay compositions(BBC 500 words) to compare these compositions with the ones written by English native speakers. Comparing the different semantic distributions of the word TAKE in Japanese junior high school textbooks, Japanese students’ compositions and BBC 500 words, it is clear that compositions in BBC 500 words have a better balance. This result suggests that the English native speaking children use TAKE to convey various meanings. Also the core meaning of TAKE is the highest among the three contexts under investigation. This paper suggests the textbooks should include many more various objects to enable students to learn to use them in various situations and the core meaning of TAKE should be presented in the textbooks more often. Furthermore, the semantic features of the polysemous words and their semiotic value in English should be introduced in the textbooks and taught in intentional ways.