A Study On Cognitive Processing Of Lexical Bundles By Chinese EFL Learners

Since the19thcentury, lexical bundles in language have received massive attention. Corpus-basedresearches demonstrated that lexical bundles are not only a universal linguistic phenomenon, and they alsomaintain such large amount that it may seem beyond the scope of processing possibility of human brain.However, growing numbers of researches have shown that there exists some advantage (economy) during theprocess of dealing with lexical bundles. Employing psychological methodology to explore linguisticphenomenon triggers a new trend of studying representation of lexical bundles, which focuses upon thepsychological reality of lexical bundles, i.e. whether lexical bundles are holistically stored and retrieved inMental Lexicon.The present study is an exploring study upon cognitive processing of lexical bundles by Chinese EFLlearners. To be specific, the present study addresses the following research questions:1. Is there significant processing advantage for lexical bundles over non-lexical bundles by Chinese EFLlearners?2. To what degree is the LB facilitatory effect, if any, caused by processing advantage? and3. Is the facilitatory effect a result of familiarity with the visual shape of the lexical bundles?The present study, upon the definition given by Biber et al.(1999), firstly categorizes lexical bundles asfeatured by “high-frequency” and “nonidiomatic”. Secondly,80subjects from non-English majors are invited totake part in four self-paced reading experiments in the three forms of “word-by-word experiment”,“portion-by-portion experiment” and “sentence-by-sentence experiment”. DMDX is applied in programming thematerials, measuring and recording subjects’ different reaction times on lexical bundles and non-lexical bundles.Finally, both by-subject analysis and by-item analysis are conducted on collected data. The findings of thepresent study are addressed as the following:For the first two research questions addressed in the present study, it is found that reaction times onlexical bundles are shorter than non-lexical bundles all the time, moreover, with reading setting becoming morenaturalistic, response to lexical bundles is found significantly faster than non-lexical bundles. This findingsupport the holistic storage and retrieve of lexical bundles, because much time is saved for the processing of eachword in lexical bundles is economized. Two factors, word length and frequency, are known to facilitate onlineprocessing. Though non-lexical bundles are endued with these facilitators in experiment, incremental facilitatory effect is efficiently found in lexical bundles in reading, which also suggests psychological reality of lexicalbundles despite in biased comparing conditions. As to the third research question mentioned above, researchresults still report significant processing advantage of lexical bundles over non-lexical bundles, even thoughvisual disturbance is set up.The results of the present study have some significance for L2teaching. Language teachers shouldstrengthen the instruction of knowledge on lexical bundles and emphasize the positive role of lexical bundles ineffective language learning. Taking use of native English corpus as a guide in teaching, teachers could guidestudents to systematically master some important lexical bundles and improve their sensitivity to lexical bundles.