The Study Of Psycholinguistic Researches At Home And Abroad In Recent Two Decades

Psycholinguistics is an interdiscipline of psychology and linguistics. It mainly studies the physical basis and various mental mechanisms of language. In foreign countries, long before, many researchers paid their more attention to psycholinguistic researches. In our country, psycholinguistics develops very late, but we can see that the contents and quantity of articles in recent two decades published in the major domestic FLT journals have been expanded. More and more researchers show their interest in this fresh and promising discipline. Recently, scholars at home and abroad have made overview researches on Psycholinguistics. However, many of them have just illustrated concrete aspect of psycholinguistics, and haven't fully overviewed the recent two decades of psycholinguistic tendency and trend in the domestic and foreign researches. Therefore, the present study attempts to overview the recent two decades of psycholinguistic research methods and research contents at home and abroad and make comparison between them in order to help readers understand the wide gap between domestic and foreign psycholinguistic researches, to encourage our researchers to incorporate foreign excellent research methods and thought, and to strive to make our psycholinguistic researches up to a new level.Based on 16 major domestic FLT journals and psycholinguistic journals at home and abroad, the total number is 286, among them, 230 from 16 major domestic FLT journals , 13 from domestic psycholinguistic key journal, 43 from foreign key academic journal about psycholinguistics. The present study makes the analysis of all of the articles from the two aspects of research methods and research contents.The result shows that on the one hand, in terms of research methods, the domestic articles of recent two decades are mainly non-empirical, with the percentage of 92.59%. Most of researchers rely on the relevant research theories, by virtue of their own specific personal experience and teaching practices to express their personal viewpoint and idea. Data collection lacks of the scientific method. Many researchers collect examples as freely as they wish to support their views, and take little consideration into the typicality and representation. Therefore, the validity and reliability of researches are low. In the finite empirical researches, with the percentage of 7.41%, most of the researchers combine the quantitative method with qualitative method. On the contrary, foreign researches mainly adopts the empirical researches, with the percentage of 88%, many researchers take advantage of quantitative research method, with the combination of average with standard deviation or standard score, to get the result. Many foreign researchers pay more attention to collecting the typical and representative data, so the validity and reliability of researches are relatively high.On the other hand, in terms of research contents, domestic scholars classify the contents into the following aspects: overview, psycholinguistic application into listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation, psycholinguistic application into the second foreign language, the relationship between language and culture or society, psycholinguistic application into other areas, and so on. Among the domestic articles, overview occupied 63.37%, psycholinguistic application into listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation 23.87%, psycholinguistic application into the second foreign language 6.58%, the relationship between language and culture or society 2.88%,and psycholinguistic application into other areas 3.30%. Similarly, foreign scholars have done psycholinguistic researches from such respects as overview, psycholinguistic application into listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation, psycholinguistic application into the second foreign language, psycholinguistic application into the second foreign language, language information process, psycholinguistic application into other areas and so on. Among them, overview occupied 11.63%, psycholinguistic application into listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation 37.21%, psycholinguistic application into the second foreign language 16.28%, language information process 11.63% and psycholinguistic application into other areas 23.25%.The statistic figure indicates that domestic psycholinguistic research theme is relatively wide and concrete, tightly connected with practical teaching and daily life, while foreign psycholinguistic research theme is relatively abstract, strongly theoretical and logical, deeply persuasive and hard to understand.The conclusion of the present study is that domestic researchers ought to make the reference of foreign psycholinguistic research methods and thoughts, to be faced with more specific, deeper, and wider researches, and facilitate domestic psycholinguistics up to a new level.