Effect Of Lexical Patterns Finding Instruction On L2 Vocabulary Learning In The Chinese EFL Classroom Setting

This study investigates the effects of lexical patterns finding instruction on L2 vocabulary learning in the Chinese EFL classroom setting from a cognitive psychological perspective.Although there is consensus among language teachers that Hoey's theory of lexical patterns (1991) should be applied to foreign/second language vocabulary teaching, no empirical research has been conducted to examine how exactly the knowledge about lexical patterns in text would enhance learners' foreign/second language learning. Yamada's study (2005) is the only empirical study that examines L2 learners' perception of lexical patterns, but it is not concerned with the application of lexical patterns to language teaching. To overcome the weaknesses in the previous studies, a one-month training program on lexical patterns was designed.Sixty-eight college freshmen were randomly assigned to the experimental group and the control group. The pretests showed that the two groups had no significant difference in vocabulary size and the target words were unfamiliar to them. During the one-month training period, the two groups both engaged in reading comprehension tasks, and the experimental group had to fulfill an additional task, which required them to find out the lexical patterns in their reading passages. After the training, the two groups were given three posttests, i.e., (1) an immediate posttest, (2) a delayed posttest, and (3) a sensitivity posttest. In addition, they were asked to respond to a questionnaire on their opinions about the effectiveness of the instruction. Data from the experiment were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively.The results indicate that participants became more sensitive to the lexical patterns because of the instruction and lexical patterns had some effects on their lexical acquisition. However, their progress lies in improvement on recognizing repetitious links and only short-term effect on vocabulary acquisition is found.Based on Noticing Hypothesis, Depth of Processing Hypothesis and context theory, we argue that as a method of learning vocabulary from context, lexical patterns finding is not suitable for low-proficiency learners. Language proficiency may influence noticing unknown words and words constituting paraphrase. Failure in noticing influenced what is processed, and the shallow level of processing causes low retention of the words.