A Study Of The Mental Lexicon Of Chinese Business English Learners

This study explores the differences between the mental lexicon of Chinese BusinessEnglish Learners(CBEL) and Chinese General English Learners and the factors affectingthe access of the CBEL through quantitative and qualitative methods.Gui(2000) puts forth the factors affecting the access of the L2 mental lexicon, whichare lexicality, frequency effect, semantic network and context. Zhang(2004) confirms thesteadiness of the Word Association Test(WAT) during the research of mental lexicon. Theauthor employs the WAT as instrument to examine the difference and the factors.Data consist of the responses and comparison of 50 CBEL, 50 CGEL and 50 nativespeakers of business and management, who attempted to produce three responses uponthe WAT that consisting of 20 BEC high-frequency words and 20 TEM 4 high-frequencywords as stimuli. After the data analysis, interviews were conducted upon the typicalsubjects. Analysis reveals that (a) CBEL give more business contextual responses thanCGEL upon all the stumuli, (b) semantic network helps a lot for the CBEL to acquirebusiness vocabulary (c) context plays very important role during the access of the mentallexicon by the L2 learners.Findings deepen the research of mental lexicon into a specific field---ESP learnersand support the context-oriented vocabulary acquisition and teaching approach. Thisstudy discusses the pedagogical as well as theoretical implications of the findings for ESPmental lexicon for further research.