Mechanism Of Second Language Learners Making The Jump From Receptive Vocabulary To Productive Vocabulary

Vocabualry acquisition is of crucial importance to second language acquisition,since it is along with second language learners' whole acquisiton process.Wilkins(1972,p.111) declared that 'while without grammar very little can be conveyed,without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.' Among the research questions,research on receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary gets great attention.There are two reasons.Firstly,understanding vocabularies and using vocabularies are two fundermental processes in second language acquisition and two most important skills for second language learners.In another word,vocabulary acquisition is the process of understanding and using vocabularies.Secondly,researches show that there is a great gap between second language learners' receptive and productive vocabulary.Most learners' productive vocabulary,will increase only until it reaches an average level.As a result,second language learners will face the 'active vocabulary threshold' and must jump the gap between receptive and productive vocabulary.If the problem is not solved,second language learners' language competence can not develop well.Based on experiments,this paper discusses the mechanism and strategies of second language learners making the jump from receptive vocabulary to productive vocabulary.Study one and study two prove the existence of active vocabulary threshold.The first study prove that controlled productive vocabulary size lagged behind receptive vocabulary size and fossilized when second language learners reached medium level and vocabulary level reached Yi level.Since the first study focused on controlled productive vocabulary,the second study discussed the development of productive vocabulary.The result is very similar to the first Study's result which proved that free productive vocabulary does not develop after vocabulary level reached Yi level.The third study discussed why there is a gap betwen receptive vocabularies and productive vocabularies from the mechanism perspective.Receptive vocabularies are mapped to first language translations and productive vocabularies are mapped to second language semantics. Second language learners must have semantic knowledge,no matter only have declarative knowledge which is outside the entry or construct the mapping between seond language form and meaning which is entering the entry.It is not easy to differentiate the two and only oral production will help.The fourth study discussed why there is a gap betwen receptive vocabularies and productive vocabularies from the processing level perspective.In fact,The differences of receptive and productive vocabulary determines a given word's degree of integration into the mental lexicon.Productive vocabularies produces a greater proportion of semantic and syntagmatic responses and receptive vocabularies produces a greater proportion of phonological and clang-other responses.Similar to Wolter(2001) study,our study shows that second language learners' mental lexicon presents a shift tendency when receptive vocabularies develop into productive vocabularies.The tendency is that semantic and syntagmatie responses increase while phonological and clang-other responses decrease.Receptive and productive mechanism and the differences of receptive and productive vocabulary in mental lexicon suggest us to take some vocabulary strategies to help Chinese second language learners to develop productive vocabularies and jump the acive vocabulary threshold.