Representations Of Cognition-Knowledge Bilingual Double Structures In Chinese College Students' English Learning

In the field of foreign language teaching, people have been pursuing for an effective teaching approach all the time. They have tried various methods, but few of them concerned the underlying factors of a good or a bad method. How is foreign language developed and formed in the brain of bilinguals? How do cognitive structure and knowledge structure change in our brain when a foreign language is developed? In view of these questions, and from the psychological nature of word meaning, this thesis illustrates the Chinese-English bilingual representations of cognitive structure and knowledge structure, which attempt to provide a theoretical guideline for foreign language learning theory and strategies and find a new teaching method under the framework of Cognition-Knowledge Bilingual Double Structures Theory~2 (also 'Language and Thought Structures Theory') that was proposed by Yin (2005).Cognition-Knowledge Bilingual Double Structures Theory was put forward according to the problems and phenomena in college English teaching of China. It attempts to illustrate the formation and the development process of foreign language concept representation and the accessing mechanism of foreign language vocabulary in the framework of bilingual thinking and cognition mode. The author discusses this theory from the perspective of how two languages are organized extremely orderly in memory, namely, at the beginning of foreign language learning, the foreign language vocabulary sets up psychological relations with concept with the help of mother language and later forms its own schema of mental lexicon. With the improvement of foreign language competence, language learners gradually form systematic foreign language cognitive structure and knowledge structure. In foreign language cognition process, the foreign language knowledge structure access foreign words meaning from mother language knowledge structure through the mediation of concept.In order to test how foreign language learners establish an independent foreign language cognition and thinking mode on the basis of mother language cognition and thinking mode, a semantic priming experiment has been carried out. Twenty one non-English major sophomores and twenty English major juniors were recruited from Xihua University. The experiment gave a within- and cross-language test to Chinese-English college students by changing the relations between prime and target. SPSS was used to analyze the data of reaction times. The result showed that the reaction times are not significant among more proficient bilinguals in all situations; while less proficient bilinguals react to English abstract words much slower than to concrete words. At last the following conclusions are reached: 1) Chinese-English bilinguals own separated Chinese Cognition-Knowledge Structure as well as English Cognition-Knowledge Structure. Successful semantic access is due to that they share a common storage of concept; 2) English and Chinese are separated by Chinese Cognition-Knowledge Structure and English Cognition- Knowledge Structure storing and retrieving vocabulary* respectively; 3) learners of different English levels retrieve English in different ways. More proficient English learners get access to meaning directly from concept; while for less proficient bilinguals, the successful semantic retrieval (esp. to abstract words) is on the basis of that the English information is transmitted to concept first, and then the information is projected to Chinese Knowledge Structure repeatedly for the connection between foreign language and concept is vague. Therefore, the reaction times of C-E type and E-E type (the target language is English) are much longer than that of C-C type and E-C type (the target language is Chinese). The thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter One points out the aim and significance of the thesis and defines some concerned key terms in the fields of second language acquisition and language cognition research. Chapter Two reviews the main models, views, and study methods about knowledge and language representations home and abroad. Chapter Three illustrates Cognition-Knowledge Bilingual Double Structures Theory and explains its theoretical foundation, studying subject as well as theory content. In order to verify whether this theory can be applicable to college students in China, an experiment was carried out in Chapter Four. The experiment attempts to probe into the differences and similarities in semantic processing mechanisms between English and Chinese. It aims at providing an empirical evidence for Cognition-Knowledge Bilingual Double Structures Theory. Chapter Five discusses the findings reported in Chapter Four. It touches on the nature of developing foreign language knowledge from the perspective of storing and retrieving lexicon meaning. Therefore, the effect of Cognition-Knowledge Bilingual Double Structures Theory is highlighted. It is specific to the college students in China. Chapter Six discusses some implications of this study for foreign language teaching and also points out the limitations of present experiment.