The Organization Of English Mental Lexicon Of Chinese High School Students:an Empirical Study

As a hot issue and an independent subject, mental lexicon has witnessed lots of important theories and findings related to the L1and English mental lexicon. But some problems remain unsettled in the English mental lexicon field for the inconsistent findings and the small scale studies. Based on the previous research, the present study investigates the English mental lexicon organization of the Chinese high school learners. It aims to find out how words are organized in the high school learners'English mental lexicon with increasing language proficiency. Specifically, the current study addresses the following questions:1. What are the overall characteristics of the organization of English mental lexicon of Chinese high school students?2. What are the effects of word class on the organization of English mental lexicon of Chinese high school students?3. How do low frequency words affect the organization of English mental lexicon of Chinese high school students?105Chinese senior school English learners with different proficiency levels have participated in this study. The test materials include90English words from NESFC bookl to book5. According to three word classes (noun, verb, and adjective) and two levels of word frequency (high and low),60words are selected to get prompt words in the VKS test, thus30prompt words are selected to test in the WAT.. All the results have been classified and analyzed.Three major findings have gained from the research:1) The characteristics of English mental lexicon with the increase of English learners'grade are presented. The proportion of semantic responses increases with the increase of English learners'vocabulary proficiency, whereas that of non-semantic responses decreases. However, in spite of the rise in semantic responses, the high proportion of non-semantic responses still exists in all grades.2) Words classes have different preferences of five responses. Nouns can generate more semantic responses than verbs and adjectives while verbs produce the highest rate of non-semantic responses.3) Words of high frequency produced more semantic responses in the English mental lexicon than words of low frequency. Among the five responses, high frequency words produce a comparable proportion of paradigmatic and syntagmatic responses while low frequency words evoke a low proportion of syntagmatic responses.The findings of the present study have theoretical and pedagogical significance. Theoretically, it deals with the dispute on the nature of English mental lexicon and enriches word class effects on the English mental lexicon. Pedagogically, the current study provides both teachers and learners with vocabulary acquisition information to help them make better use of vocabulary teaching and learning strategies. It is also helpful to copy with high-low frequency words and the effects of words types rather than the traditional alphabetic entry ordering.This study has its limitations, though. Being the exploration into Chinese high school learners' English mental lexicon, one of the great challenges is to classify the response types. Based on the current findings, studies with qualitative analysis can be used in the future to further investigate the organization of English mental lexicon in terms of WAT and VKS test, thus to better understand the nature of Chinese high school learners' English mental lexicon.