| This thesis is a study of the relationship among reinforcement on syntagmatic knowledge, restructuring of mental lexicon and SLA. It makes an exploration of making ESL learners in or from China aware of the importance of word knowledge such as semantic associations in their mental lexicon. The empirical and longitudinal exploration will be of some significance in ESL teaching and learning, casting a vivid picture of the restructuring process of second language mental lexicon.About 200 participants of freshmen in four natural classes,two control classes and two experimental classes, and 30 Australian post-graduates received the Word Association Test. 25 prompt words are selected at random but in the same amount for each part of speech. In view of convenience, write-write WAT method was adopted. All the participants were required to finish setting down response words within 30 minutes. Three response words at least were listed for each stimulus word.All data were collected longitudinally after long-term syntagmatic reinforcement and sufficient linguistic input and output. In the completion of the post-test of WAT, an interview was conducted for the clarification of mental process and identification of the influence from syntagmatic reinforcement. It has been found that the first and the second language mental lexicon associations would undergo changes between syntagmatic and paradigmatic links. Mental lexicon develops in a continuous way. Each word has its own history, which will be experienced by the process of non-semantic to semantic development. For unfamiliar words, students might have more non-semantic responses in WAT. Semantic responses and English proficiency were correlated to some extent, and the correlation was significant. Semantic responses were found positively correlated with SLA. SLA was facilitated by semantic association reinforcement in instructed classroom during the course of the restructuring of mental lexicon. |
PDF Full Text Request