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A Study On Mental Lexicon Association Pattern Between Han-Chinese And Korean-Chinese High School EFL Learners

Posted on:2017-02-02Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:X J PiaoFull Text:PDF
GTID:2297330488956957Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Mental lexicon is a hypothesis proposed by the psychologists. As is acknowledged, mental lexicon contains all knowledge that a person knows about words. Nowadays the study of bilingual mental lexicons has become the center of interest in psycholinguistics and second language lexical researches. Most mental lexicon researches are driven by the belief that association behavior can reveal information about the organization and development of the mental lexicon. As Aitchison (2003) claimed, an analysis of the responses to a stimulus word may give useful information about how words might be linked and stored together in a person’s mind. Since vocabulary learning is critical task of language learning. So that we should study the organization and link patterns of mental lexicon. We should master the way second language vocabulary learning either. So as to enhance the vocabulary size and improve the vocabulary learning ability.This paper aims to investigate the storage and representation of bilingual and trilingual mental lexicons of Chinese high school English learners. It compares the L1 Chinese and L2 English mental lexicons of Han-Chinese learners, and compares the L1 Korean, L2 Chinese and L3 English mental lexicons of Korean-Chinese learners. And it also attempts to compare the English mental lexicon association patterns between Han-Chinese and Korean-Chinese learners. This paper takes the theory of semantic network as the theoretical foundation, and employs word association test on 137 high school English learners.30 English stimulus words is selected, Chinese and Korean stimulus words are equivalents of English words. Statistical analysis applied SPSS (20.0).It is concluded findings of the present research. Firstly, high school English learners are favor semantic links over phonological links in organizing the mastered or familiar lexical items in mind. This research further support the semantic view. Secondly, most of Han-Chinese learners’ English mental lexicon is linked in a paradigmatic pattern. And most of Korean-Chinese learners’ English mental lexicons is linked in a syntagmatic pattern. Thirdly, learners’ L1 background and word class have a influence on the association patterns of L2 and L3 mental lexicon. Finally, bilingual and trilingual mental lexicons share different but overlapped storage and retrieval systems. The research is expected to shed light on the cognitive rules of high school English learners’ vocabulary leaning. It helps learners have a better understanding on the storage and representation of mental lexicon. It also provide some pedagogical implications for vocabulary teaching and learning.
Keywords/Search Tags:Mental Lexicon, Word Association Test, English Learners, Han-Chinese learners, Korean-Chinese learners
PDF Full Text Request
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