Study Of The Chinese Mental Lexicon Of Indonesian Students In Non-Chinese Language Context

Lexicon,as the basis of language skills,has always played an important role in second language acquisition.With the development of psycho-linguistics,mental lexicon affecting second language acquisition has drawn an increasing amount of attention since the last century.In recent years,as TCSOL(Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages)continues to develop and improve,studies on psychological vocabulary in the discipline have also been on the rise.The thesis is aimed at exploring the characteristics of mental lexicon of Indonesian Chinese learners in non-Chinese language context and its influence to TCSOL vocabulary teaching.The study,based on previous analysis of mental lexicon formation,adopts the theoretical frame of mental lexicon organization and model extraction in second-language.It studies the reaction types of Indonesian Chinese learners at different levels(elementary,intermediate,advanced)through word association.It also explores the different effects on mental lexicon reaction made by lexicon depth,speech,word frequency and abstractness.After comparing the results with those of Chinese native speakers,it is not difficult to find the difference between native and non-native speakers of Chinese in learning mental lexicon,which will facilitate lexicon teaching in TCSOL.The results show that Chinese mental lexicon has semantic characteristics:excessive aggregation reactions in elementary group,equivalent aggregation and combination reactions in intermediate group and a lack of combination reactions in advanced group.As the learning level rises,reactions to knowledge interconnection grow gradually.Moreover,the depth of vocabulary,speech,word frequency and abstract vocabulary do have an impact on reaction types.Familiarizing high-frequency and concrete words can produce relatively more semantic associations.Few Chinese learners in Indonesia can reach the advanced stage.Learners at the advanced level,though having similar mental lexicon type as native speakers,still differ from the latter.Therefore,varied teaching methods should be adopted to cater for these three levels of learners.Through a series of findings,the study presents some useful suggestions for teaching methods improvement.At the elementary level,it is recommended to emphasize the teaching of grapheme,pronunciation and combination.At the intermediate level,it is suggested that teachers should pick appropriate textbooks for learners and that consciously strengthen the aggregation relationship.That is to say,teachers should start from explaining the basic meanings of words and then teach synonyms and antonyms of the words.At the advanced level,teachers should help students identify and correct their existing language mistakes.Students need to understand the concept of mandarin Chinese and its standards,and then compare their acquired mental lexicon with those in mandarin Chinese to find out the differences and make corrections by themselves.They also need to update and expand their existing mental lexicon on a regular basis.