A Study On The Developmental Features Of Word Association Patterns Of Chinese EFL Learners

The present study investigates the word association patterns of Chinese EFL learners.It aims to find out how words are stored in the L2 mental lexicon,and what are the development features of L2 mental lexicon.In addition,it tries to find out whether learners' vocabulary size has an influence on word association patterns.Specially,the present study addresses the following questions:1.What are the response patterns of L1 and L2 word association tests?2.What are the developmental features of word association patterns for Chinese EFL learnersin different stages?3.What effects do vocabulary size and word typehave on learners' L2 word association patterns? Eighty students at two different proficiency levels have participate in the study,Forty students were from Jiangsu Haitou Senior High School.Forty sophomores came from Jiangsu University of Science and Technology.The test materials include L1 word association test,L2 word association test and a vocabulary size test.All the results have been coded,classified and analyzed.Four major findings have emerged from the research.(1)The results of L1 word association test showed that the proportions of paradigmatic,syntagmatic and encyclopedic responses occupy a heavy proportion among all the responses.It means that a majority of L1 word association responses belong to semantically-related responses.The results of L2 word association test indicated that learners produced the highest proportion of paradigmatic responses,followed by syntagmatic responses and phonological and other responses,A comparison between L1 and L2 responses types demonstrate both similarities and differences,however,the two kinds of responses are predominantly semantic-based.(2)The comparison between the responses patterns of the two groups showed that L2 word association patterns vary with increasing competence of L2,With the development of learners' English proficiency,learners have a tendency to produce more semantically-related responses.(3)Correlation analysis between vocabulary size and response types show that learner's vocabulary size has no significant correlation with their word association ability,Consequently,the vocabulary size test itself can not be used as a reliable measurement of word association ability.Further more,prompt word types which include word class,frequency and concreteness have influences on responses patterns.Concrete or abstract prompt words,words of different word class or having different frequency tend to elicit different response words.