Representational Structures Of Bilingual Mental Lexicon And Second Language Lexical Competence

Beginning with an extensive review over representational structures of bilingual mental lexicon, the thesis is to point out that the formation and development of conceptual organization shows how L2 lexical competence develops, i.e., in the early phase of second language acquisition, lexical connections between first and second language are dominant while as greater fluency is acquired, reliance on concept mediation between the two languages increases. In order to find out whether this is applicable to Chinese students' English lexical competence, an empirical study has been conducted. From the analysis of the collected L2 lexical errors, it is clear that most students' English lexical competence does not develop as smoothly as expected. By analyzing the differences between L1 and L2 lexical entry, the thesis is to discuss the major problem that hinders the development of learners' lexical competence. Finally, for the better development of Chinese learners' English lexical competence some strategies are proposed, i.e., increasing the input of English semantic information, enhancing the awareness of the semantic differences between English words and Chinese equivalents, and establishing and improving English semantic network.