| Bilinguals refer to people who can apply two languages in their communication.English learners of China with significant differences between English and Chinese,whose English is incomplete in terms of grammatical system so they can be defined as Chinese-English imbalanced bilinguals.The cognitive processing mechanism of their speech production in English has attracted the attention of language researchers for a long time.Previous studies have mostly focused on the conceptual production and coding mechanism of speech production process.Few scholars have studied the procedural process of L2 speech production of Chinese-English imbalanced bilinguals,and even less on the comprehensive investigation of the accuracy and response speed of L2 target structure.In the cognitive process of the most complex composer processing in the process of speech production,it is necessary to deeply understand whether external language stimulation(frequency,language,channel)can cause imbalanced bilinguals to produce segments of cognitive input information,thus producing activation cascades.In the encoding process such as vocabulary and grammar,we need to know how imbalanced bilinguals retrieve the mental lexicon and declarative rules so as to make L2 product proceduralization,thus promoting the automatic processing of L2 production.In order to facilitate these understandings,we need to consider the accuracy and speed of L2 speech production of imbalanced bilinguals.Syntactic priming is an ideal paradigm in the field of empirical research on speech production.In recent years,many scholars believe that it has become a new research direction in cross-disciplinary research of psychology and linguistics.Therefore,this study first reviews the current situation of theoretical and empirical studies on syntactic priming and speech production.On the basis of literature review,this study revises Kormos.J(2006)'s bilingual speech processing model and proposes a ‘bilingual speech processing model' for imbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals.The basic hypothesis of the model is that external stimulation(priming)will make Chinese-English imbalanced bilinguals activate cascade and be procedural in speech production,thus making L2 speech production form automatic processing,and automatic processing cascade is associated with bilingual mental lexicon and shared syntactic representation retrieval.Based on ‘the bilingual speech processing model of Chinese-English imbalanced bilinguals',this study mainly adopts the experimental investigation into syntactic priming to answer the following research questions:(1)What impact do the different priming intensities(the intensity of external stimulation)have on L2 speech production?(2)What are the effects of different priming modes(stimulating languages and channels)on L2 speech production?(3)Will L2 level,verb repetition,noun animacy and personal differences affect L2 speech production?In order to answer these questions,this study designed a 3×4 syntactic priming task of E-prime picture description,and then used an experimental method of 1/1000 seconds(ms)to investigate the L2 online speech production of Chinese-English imbalanced bilinguals of college students in China.This study using TOPSIS examines whether external stimulation can cascade and proceed cognitive activation,which simulations will have a greater impact on L2 speech production of imbalanced bilinguals,and whether other factors will also have an impact on the priming results.To achieve these objectives,this study collected data on immediate oral production under experimental conditions,including target sentence production,rate of target sentence production and pronunciation response time,second language proficiency,verb repetition and noun animacy hierarchy and natural conditions(such as gender,college entrance examination scores,parents' education,etc.),learning environment(learning methods,learning channels,etc.),vocabulary familiarity,language ability self-assessment data of Chinese-English imbalanced bilinguals with different priming intensity(bidirectional priming,unidirectional priming and no priming),different priming channels(visual and auditory)and different priming languages(English and Chinese).The experimental study found that:1)Research One(the effects of the priming intensities on L2 speech production): no matter which priming language(English,Chinese),which priming channel(visual,auditory),the production ratio,reaction time and comprehensive priming statistics showed that the results of the bi-directional priming group Q1(both read and read,both listen and follow-up)were significantly better than those of the unidirectional priming group Q2(only read,only listen and not follow-up),and the results of the unidirectional priming group Q2 were significantly better than those of the non-priming control group Kz.Therefore,we can conclude that the priming ratio of syntactic priming target sentences in different priming languages and different priming channels is positively correlated with the priming intensities.These results show that the more exposed and stimulated the target structure in the priming experiment,the better the accuracy of L2 speech production in the target structure,the faster the response speed and the stronger the priming effect of the imbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals.This also confirms the hypothesis that frequent stimulation can produce activation cascades,and memory enhancement can produce procedural effects to drive automatic processing.In short,frequent stimulation such as repetitive second language drills can promote L2 speech production.2)Research Two(the effects of priming modes on L2 speech production): in the bi-directional priming experiment(A-English visual priming and B-English auditory priming),the production ratio of English auditory priming was better than that of English visual priming;the response time result was that English visual priming was faster than English auditory priming;the comprehensive priming effect was the final priming measure,and the result was that English auditory priming was better than English visual priming(Q1A:M=0.525<B: M=0.574).In the cross-language priming experiment(C-Chinese visual priming and D-Chinese auditory priming),production ratio,reaction condition(reverse index)and comprehensive priming effect were all better than those of Chinese visual priming(Q1C:M=0.524<Q1D:M=0.574).In the same channel experiment(A-English visual 0.525,C-Chinese visual 0.524)/(B-E auditory 0.570,D-Chinese auditory 0.574),there was almost no significant difference in all variables.Only when responding,Chinese auditory activation was faster than English auditory activation.The overall trend of each experiment in unidirectional start up group was consistent with that in bidirectional priming group.The experimental subjects in the control group were basically the same.These findings indicate that auditory input and English intralingual input can make learners more effective.Foreign language teachers can lay more emphasis on auditory training and English intralingual training to speed up the reaction rate of L2 speech output of unbalanced bilinguals.Chinese priming is also effective and the role of first language cannot be ignored.3)Research Three(other factors affecting L2 speech production): the L2 level of imbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals is positively correlated with the syntactic priming effect,that is,the relatively high level of imbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals has stronger priming effect,while the low level of priming effect is weak;verb repetition priming can also affect the L2 production of Chinese-English bilinguals,and the number of repetition target sentences of core verbs in sentences increases,that is,existential vocabulary enhancement effect;the difference of noun animacy hierarchy is obvious with the production of target sentence.Meanwhile,the production value and reaction time of target sentence show that when the difference of noun animacy hierarchy is 2,the production of target sentence is the most;when the difference of animacy hierarchy is 1,the average value of response time is the shortest.Among the individual differences,there was a significant correlation between the English scores of college entrance examination and the priming effect(P=0.028 < 0.05),and a weak correlation(P=0.084)between the Chinese score and the English score.Other factors such as natural conditions,self-assessment of ability,learning environment and vocabulary familiarity had no significant influence on the L2 speech production of Chinese-English imbalanced bilinguals.These findings indicate that among many personal factors,language proficiency,especially L2 level,is significantly correlated with L2 speech production of Chinese-English imbalanced bilinguals.In Chinese-English imbalanced bilinguals,the higher the level shows the better the priming effect.That is,because of the cascade of activation produced by external stimulation,the formation of procedural automatic processing is affected by L2 level(the perfection of mental lexicon and declarative rule system).The following educational suggestions and research innovations could be put forward to the readers:(1)Repeated practice: in the process of second language learning,repeated practice and other frequent stimulation can promote the production of L2 speech.Picture description,partner script,sentence recall and sentence completion tasks are all stimulative through repeated practice.Repeated practice of simple knowledge can also promote the generation of high-level syntactic structure.(2)Listening training: in the process of second language learning,auditory input and stimulation in L2 language can more effectively promote L2 language output,that is,listening training can more effectively improve the output capacity of second language.(3)Knowledge training:the reserve of lexical and syntactic knowledge of the second language is crucial to the output and speed of the second language production,which indicates that to improve the output ability of the second language,the training and accumulation of lexical and syntactic knowledge of the second language should be strengthened in teaching.(4)First language training: for Chinese-English Shared syntactic representation,the input of the corresponding structure of the mother tongue has a positive impact on the quantity and speed of the output of the second language,that is,the syntactic knowledge of the positive first language transfer is conducive to the acquisition of the relevant knowledge of the second language.The results of this study confirm the hypothesis of cascade activation and procedural activation in the Chinese-English bilingual production model.The proposed speech production model for Chinese-English imbalanced bilinguals is a new theoretical exploration of the integration of the field of second language acquisition and the field of psychology.In terms of application,the results of this study will help language educators to attach importance to the teaching method of repetitive rehearsal and listening comprehension exercises,and to strengthen the design of repetitive rehearsal in second language teaching,i.e.strengthening memory through frequent stimulation.The experimental study of production ratio and response time can also provide useful inspiration for the multivariate comprehensive evaluation in linguistic research. |
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