An Eye-tracking Study Of The Effect Of Language Proficiency On Chinese EFL Learners’ Conceptual Transfer In Their Processing Of L2 English Sentence Comprehension

From the perspective of the conceptual competence theory, semantic transfer is defined as the influence of one language upon the use of another in the area of semantics. Previous studies on semantic transfer are mainly limited to the manifestations of semantic transfer at the lexicosemantic level, leaving semantic transfer at the propositional semantic level and the mechanism that underlies semantic transfer uncovered. Among the few studies which aim to investigate the mechanism underlying the semantic transfer, most of them are about theoretical and the relatively few empirical studies focus on the language production(sentence-cloze task, translation-induced sentence cloze task, oral-description task and story-written task), with the exploration on the process of transfer and its investigation from the aspect of language comprehension ignored. Previous researches focus on the language production and few researches probe into the language comprehension concerning the language proficiency.Based on the previous studies, by employing the advanced eye-tracking technique, after recording the first fixation duration, fixation count, regression path duration of the subjects, the present study aims to find the language conceptual difference of the online language process concerning different language levels. The researches questions are as follows:(1) Does the transfer of NL mode of conceptualization take place in L2 sentence comprehension?(2) Does the language proficiency affect the transfer of NL mode of conceptualization?The whole study manipulates a 2 level(stimulus type: SMC and EMC) × 2(language level: sophomore and postgraduate) within-participant design. Twenty-two subjects consisting of eleven postgraduates and eleven sophomores majoring in English took part in the experiment. The experimental materials are divided into SMC( shared mode of conceptualization concerning Chinese and English) and EMC( English mode of conceptualization).The apparatus is Eye Link 1000 from SR Research Company. The materials were presented on the computer screen randomly. The subjects are required to carry out the sensibility judgment by pressing the button upon understanding the sentence. After that a corresponding question is presented. There are two purposes as follows: on the one hand, it is to test whether the subjects have a real understanding of the question; on the other hand, it is to supervise the subjects to ensure they carefully read the material for the purpose of recording the wanted eye-track. All the eye-movement data should be put into the statistic software SPSS 16.0. The experiment is completed in the Key Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience & Foreign Language Learning in SISU.Research findings are as follows:(1)Without the priming condition, there is almost not much difference in understanding the SMC and EMC in terms of first fixation time. But there is much difference between the second fixation time and regression path time. Therefore, the phenomenon of L1 conceptual transfer does takes place in the L2 sentence comprehension;(2) For the low-level language learners, L1 conceptual transfer is closely related with the language proficiency; For the high-level language learners, L1 conceptual transfer is not related with language proficiency;(3) In the low-level stage, the L1 conceptual transfer competence can stimulate the development of the language proficiency. But the influence is increasingly weak with the language proficiency growing.To sum up, conceptual transfer does take place in L2 sentence. The phenomenon of L1 conceptual transfer is likely to take place in the phase of low-level language. But the influence can grow weak with the language proficiency growing.At last, relevant discussion will be offered based on the theory of conceptual transfer. And the implication of the thesis is given as well.