A Study Of The Effect Of Second Language Proficiency On Semantic Representation And Processing Of Second Language Words

Since second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition has been drawn the attention of psycholinguists and applied linguists, mental lexicon has become a popular research area for them in recent decades. Mental lexicon is defined as the representation of words in our permanent knowledge. To explore how L2 words are represented and stored can improve the quality of vocabulary acquisition. Previous studies attempted to reveal the nature of L2 mental lexicon for Chinese English learners, ignoring language proficiency (English proficiency). However, no agreements were reached for the nature of L2 mental lexicon, that is to say, the question needs to be examined. Besides, whether L2 proficiency has an effect on semantic representation and processing is another question that has not reached agreements.The present study aims to assess the effects of L2 proficiency on bilingual lexicon presentation and processing. We designed the translation priming research from L2 to LI performed by 60 students:highly proficient L2 learners and less proficient L2 learners, with 30 English junior majors from one college in Jiangxi province and 30 students in Senior Grade One from one high school in Jiangxi province.80 English primes,80 Chinese targets and 80 Chinese non-words were the tested materials, including 60 prime-target pairs obtained from a free association task. Thus,60 translation prime-target pairs,20 semantically unrelated prime-target pairs and 80 Chinese non-words were used in the L2-L1 priming experiment. A lexical decision task of the masked priming paradigm designed by E-prime is used in which the critical trials consist of Chinese targets proceeded by English primes. The independent variables in the experiment were designed as 2 (translation prime-target pairs and semantically unrelated prime-target pairs) ×2 (highly proficient L2 learners and less proficient L2 learners), with response latency and response accuracy as the dependent variables. In the experiment, the time interval between primes and targets (SOA) was 300ms. We used the SPSS to analyze the tested response latency and response accuracy.The results of the experiment showed that the translation priming research produced facilitative priming effects for all subjects. Highly proficient learners showed stronger priming effects, whereas the less proficient group produced weaker priming effects. Taken together, the results showed that language proficiency influenced translation priming effects. And the pattern of priming effects is consistent with an interactive activation architecture in which the semantic (conceptual) level is shared by L1 and L2 for L2 learners. The implication is that L2 proficiency has a major influence on how L2 learners represent and process words in their L2.