| This thesis aims at exploring in the process of constructing the L2 mental lexicon, what problems would exert influence upon the lexical representation and development and if there is probability to approach these problems in college English vocabulary acquisition. The thesis begins by reviewing the findings of past studies that holds a dual system in mental lexicon for L2 learners, that is, form system and meaning system. The college students for non-English majors are likely to make direct link between the form systems of two different languages instead of conceptual link, which would result in misuse of words or even, lexical fossilization. Among other things, vocabulary teaching approach may be one factor that affects the strength of the link between the form system of L2 and the meaning system. To test this hypothesis, experiments with two different vocabulary teaching approaches were carried out on college students for non-English majors. Approach 1 gave students Chinese translation of the new words and example sentences as assistance when presenting new words, whereas approach 2 gave students no Chinese assistance but English information related to the new words. When assessing the results of these two vocabulary teaching approaches, word association test was adopted. Through comparing the frequency and mean proportion of the different patterns of response, the results gotten showed that different vocabulary teaching approaches do bring influence upon the construction of mental lexicon, but the change was not fundamental one. It proved that to constructing an effective mental lexicon is a long and complicated process, and different stages require emphasis upon different aspects, among which some components may be much more demanding to acquire and so claim to be the hard nut in L2 teaching and learning practice. Thus how to enhance the effectiveness of L2 vocabulary instruction is still an intriguing question that invites more researches.
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