Exploring L2 Mental Lexicon Through Spot Dictation

Mental lexicon has become an independent and currently lively field in psycholinguistics. Channel (1988) argues that what mental lexicon looks like is the main target issue. Different models are proposed to illustrate the organization or the structure of mental lexicon. To explore how lexicons are related and stored especially in L2 mental lexicon can improve vocabulary acquisition. If the store is messy with no certain organization or relations at all, though lexicons are stored in the mind, it is extremely difficult to access and retrieve them.This paper tends to focus on the listening task—spot dictation, through the failure of which, the mental lexicon state of Chinese learners of English is explored and discussed.The main research question is: in the listening task, as for the Chinese learners of English, especially the college non- English majors, does mental lexicon play its role successfully? The hypothesis is that Chinese learners of English fail to establish an effective and efficient mental lexicon. Their mental lexicon does not play its role successfully in listening and thus results in the failure of listening.This thesis adopts spot dictation as the main testing form. A questionnaire is designed as well. It is worth mentioning that spot dictation as a new method in research bears some features which are more advantageous than the traditional.Problems are reflected from the data. Analyzed from the perspective of mental lexicon, it is indicated that the state of mental lexicon is far from perfect. Suggestions are proposed as well to improve L2 mental lexicon.In a conclusion, the Chinese learners of English fail to establish an effective and efficient mental lexicon. This study reveals that the inefficiency of lexicon acquisition and failure of language tasks, such as listening, partly result from the failure of mental lexicon. Furthermore, the failure of mental lexicon is the result of the improper organization of mental lexicon. Therefore, in practice, it is believed that with a proper organization established in mental lexicon, vocabulary acquisition can be improved as well as language skills.