A Study Of The Relation Between English Proficiency Level And Bilingual Lexicosemantic Representation For Chinese EFL Learners

This study investigates the relation between English proficiency level and bilingual lexicosemantic representation for Chinese EFL learners by means of an experimental design, as well as comparative and descriptive methods. It is a research in the psycholinguistic field.The research questions of this study are:(1) What are the structures of bilingual lexicosemantic representation for Chinese EFL learners of different proficiency levels?(2) What is the relation between foreign language proficiency and the bilingual lexicosemantic representation for Chinese EFL learners?Research assumptions for the present study are as follows: When word concreteness affects participants of two different proficiency levels qualitatively in the same way in word translation recognition task, the concept mediation hypothesis is supported; when the two groups of participants are not affected by word concreteness in task performance, then the word association hypothesis is supported; but when the word concreteness has smaller influences on the participants of lower L2 proficiency group than on the higher proficiency group, the developmental hypothesis is supported. Test materials are four groups of Chinese-English word pairs: concrete translation pairs, abstract translation pairs, concrete non-translation pairs, and abstract non-translation pairs. Each group consists of 30 Chinese-English word pairs. All four groups are matched in word frequency and word length. All the words in the test materials are from The English Education Syllabus for Fulltime High Middle Schools in China, and are within the most basic range of 3,000 English vocabulary. This ensures the participants in the present study not to be hindered by unfamiliar words in the translation recognition task, thus guaranteeing the validity of the experiment.In the translation recognition task, the order of appearance of each word pair on the computer screen is ramdonized; and the participants are asked to decide whether the word pairs shown on the computer screen consist of translation equivalents or not.This study randomly picks up four classes of 120 students in all, from first-year non-English majors and third-year English majors as representing two groups of Chinese EFL learners of different proficiency levels, to participate in the translation recognition task, in the hope of obtaining the first-hand data for the research.