An Empirical Study Of The Role Of NL Mode Of Conceptualization In Foreign Language Comprehension

From the perspective of the conceptual competence theory, semantic transfer isdefined as the influence of one language upon the use of another in the area ofsemantics. To my knowledge, previous studies on semantic transfer are mainly limitedto the manifestations of semantic transfer at the lexicosemantic level, with semantictransfer at the propositional semantic level and the mechanism that underlies semantictransfer ignored. Among the few studies which aim to investigate the mechanismunderlying the semantic transfer, most of them are theoretical and the relatively fewempirical studies focus on the language production (sentence-cloze task,translation-induced sentence cloze task, oral-description task and story-written task),leaving the exploration on the process of transfer as well as its investigation from theaspect of language comprehension ignored. Based on conceptual competence modeland its underlying conceptual structure, this thesis attempts to explore the mechanismof conceptual transfer in FL sentence comprehension, and the related empirical studyis conducted.The current research adopts the empirical study by way of reaction time andaccuracy rate to explore the conceptual influence from native-language toforeign-language, namely, the native-language mode of conceptualization’s effect inFL sentence comprehension. Two research questions are put forward:(1) Does thetransfer of NL mode of conceptualization take place in FL sentence comprehension?(2) Does the induction of NL mode of conceptualization have influence on FLsentence comprehension?A within-subjects design2×2repeated measure and quantitative research isapplied to the current study. Totally, thirty students from second and third year ofpostgraduates majored in English in Sichuan International Studies University (SISU)are chosen to conduct the experiment. The experimental material is divided into twogroups: material that is in shared mode of conceptualization and material that is inEnglish-specific mode of conceptualization. All the material is programmed by E-Prime2.0, and is presented at random on the19inch wide screen. The subjects arerequired to carry out the sensibility judgment by pressing the button uponunderstanding the sentence, after which a corresponding question is presented to testwhether they have a real understanding of the question. The behavioral data ofreaction time and accuracy rate are put into the statistic software SPSS. Theexperiment is completed in the Key Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience&ForeignLanguage Learning in SISU.The research obtains the following four findings:(1) In task one where there is noprime sentence, there is no significant difference between the EMC sentencecomprehension and SMC sentence comprehension in the reaction time[t(29)=-1.755,p=.090], but there is significant difference in accuracy rate[t(29)=2.798, p=.009];(2)In task two where there is prime sentence in Chinese, there is statistical differencebetween the EMC sentence comprehension and SMC sentence comprehension in thereaction time[t(29)=-3.062, p=.005], but there is no significant difference in accuracyrate[t(29)=1.602, p=.120];(3) Comparing the EMC sentence comprehension in taskone with that in task two, there are statistically significant differences in both responsetime[t(29)=7.152, p=.000] and accuracy rate[t(29)=-3.399, p=.002]. To speak it clearly,the response time and the accuracy rate in task one is longer and lower respectivelythan those in task two;(4) Comparing the SMC sentence comprehension in task onewith that in task two, there are statistically significant differences in both responsetime[t(29)=9.749, p=.000] and accuracy rate[t(29)=-2.371, p=.025]. That is to say, theresponse time and the accuracy rate in task one is longer and lower respectively thanthose in task two.To sum up,(1) NL mode of conceptualization does transfer in FL sentencecomprehension and (2) the induction of NL mode of conceptualization may motivateFL sentence comprehension.At last, the thesis attempts to explain the reason of the above results based on the constructed transfer mechanism, and furthermore, points out the shortcomings of thisstudy.