A Study On The Formation And Development Of Chinese EFL Learners’ English Mental Lexicon

The present study, by adopting such research instruments as a word test, a questionnaire and interviews, investigates the formation and development of Chinese EFL learners’ English mental lexicon. It aims to find out the formational and developmental features of Chinese EFL learners’English mental lexicon as well as the factors that influence the formation and development of the mental lexicon.To address these questions, the present study first discusses the importance of vocabulary in EFL learning and teaching, and the necessity to carry out explorations into Chinese EFL learners’English mental lexicon. Then it reviews literature on mental lexicon, and previous researches carried out both in China and abroad. On the basis of the literature review, it goes on to construct the theoretical framework for the present study, which includes:LCCM Theory (the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models)(Evans,2006,2009), the Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition (Langacker,1987,1991; Tomasello,2003) and the Theory of Personal Experience (Dai,2007). With the theoretical framework serving as the guideline, the word test and the questionnaire are designed to examine the formation and development of Chinese EFL learners’English mental lexicon at three different developmental stages. The investigation of the eight aspects of word knowledge is the focus of the word knowledge test and the questionnaire.The subjects of the study are308students randomly selected from two different universities in China. Among the308subjects,118are freshmen,100sophomores and90juniors and seniors. The major findings of the study include:(1) Chinese EFL learners display a very weak acquisition of word knowledge in their English mental lexicon. Of the eight aspects of word knowledge in the mental lexicon, the ones that are stored in the mental lexicon of Chinese EFL learners are word form (phonological form and written form) and word meaning. Other aspects of word knowledge are almost absent. Little knowledge of word morphology, word collocation, word syntax, word context and word use in social context is stored in Chinese EFL learners’English mental lexicon.(2) As the language proficiency levels of Chinese EFL learners improve, knowledge of different aspects of word knowledge also increases. To be more specific, knowledge of word form, word meaning, word collocation, word syntax and word context increases as the learners’English language proficiency levels improve; however, there is no dramatic improvement in knowledge of word morphology and word use in social context.(3) The factors that may influence the formation and development of Chinese EFL learners’English mental lexicon include:the interference of established Chinese lexical system, lack of sufficient contextualized L2input, lack of awareness of L2roles recognition, the attitude of Chinese EFL learners towards vocabulary acquisition and the way of learning and teaching words.Based on the findings of the present study, suggestions for EFL vocabulary learning and teaching and recommendations for future studies are put forward.