A Study On The Cumulative Effect Of The Structural Priming On Chinese English Learners' Written Production

When a speaker repeats a sentence structure that he has heard or used before,this phenomenon is called structure priming.There are two versions of the mechanism of structural priming: Residual Activation Account and Implicit Learning Account.The Residual Activation Account believes that the formation of structural priming is due to the activation of the residual vocabulary in the brain,while the implicit learning account believes that the structural priming is due to the brain's implicit acquisition of language knowledge.There are evidence supported for both theories.The previous research on structural priming mainly explored the existence of structural priming and its production mechanism,while few people explored the factors that affect structural priming.Based on previous studies,this research mainly explores four aspects of the cumulative effect of structural priming: 1.Whether there is a cumulative effect of structural priming of active and passive sentences in written form for Chinese English learners;2.Whether the cumulative effect of structural priming in written form is affected by the frequency of priming sentences;3.Whether there is a long-term effect of cumulative priming of English active and passive sentences in written form;4.Whether there are differences between different levels of Chinese English learners in the cumulative effect of structural priming.This article uses picture-description paradigm task and written sentence completion task to test two different levels of Chinese English learners,the number of participants is 133.The results found that: 1.Only the high-level Chinese English learners had a cumulative effect of structural priming,and the effect only occurred under the conditions of unequal exposure passive and unequal exposure active conditions,and there was no significant cumulative effect of structural priming under equal exposure condition;2.The cumulative effect of structural priming was affected by the frequency of priming sentences.The higher the frequency,the more obvious the cumulative effect,and vice versa;3.The cumulative effect of structural priming of English active and passive sentences had no long-term effect in written form;4.Different levels of subjects had different sensitivities to the cumulative effectof structural priming.Low-level subjects did not produce cumulative effect of structural priming,while high-level subjects produced cumulative effect of structural priming.The above results showed that the cumulative effect of structural priming of active and passive sentences is related to the level of the subjects,frequency and the modes of priming.When the level of the subjects is higher,the cumulative effect of the structural priming is more obvious.Otherwise,in the written form,the long-term effects of the cumulative effect of structural priming were limited,and it was found that the subjects did not produce the cumulative effect of structural priming under the three contact conditions,regardless of whether they were low-level subjects or high-level subjects.While this study only studied the long-term effect of the cumulative effect of the structure priming of English active and passive sentences,and other structures remain to be explored.