An Empirical Study Of Lexical Selection Of Chinese English Learners

The study of bilingual lexical selection has been a controversial focus in psycholinguistics. The controversy is whether there is lexical interference across languages in the process of lexical access. That is, when selecting a target word (the word intended for production) in target language (the language intended for production), whether bilingual speakers can consider the lexical nodes of the non-response language (the language not intended for production) and interfered by them. There are mainly two conflicting models of bilinguals'lexical selection. One is language-non-specific hypothesis. Researchers hold that there is lexical interference across languages. The other one is language-specific hypothesis. Researchers hold that there is not lexical interference across languages.The paper tries to answer the following questions1 Are the conclusions reached by foreign researchers applicable to Chinese English learners? Is lexical selection of Chinese English learners language-specific or language-non-specific?2 what is the mechanism of lexical selection of Chinese English learners? What are the features of the mechanism and what is the reason for it?In order to study the process of lexical selection of Chinese English learners, RT (Reaction Time) methodology is used as experimental method in the paper. The results indicate that the mechanism of lexical selection of Chinese English learners is not consistent with the two hypotheses. More specifically, when target language is Chinese, lexical selection is a transition from language-specific to language-non-specific. When target language is English, lexical selection is a transition from language-non-specific to...