Chinese English Learners' Processing Of Noun-noun Compound Words

The mental lexicon is considered to be the specialized department of the brain for storing words.In view of the important role of words in language use,mental lexicon research has always been one of the important branches of psycholinguistics.Among them,the representation and processing of complex words is a hot topic for nearly half a century.In recent years,more and more studies have begun to explore the processing of compound words,both in the mother tongue and in the second language,helping us to better understand the processing mechanism of complex words(Sandra,1990;Chen,2009,etc.).This study has explored the processing pattern of compound words of Chinese English learners by using the behavioral experiments.With the help of the E-prime software,the lexical decision task was conducted.Specifically,the noun plus noun compounds were investigated.Through vocabulary translation,word judgment,semantic transparency test,familiarity test,etc.,40 experimental words are selected,including semantic transparency and semantic opaque compound words,with half high familiarity and half low familiarity.All item words are equipped with control words and filler words.The subjects are first-year non-English majors and third-year English majors.According to their English scores of entrance examination and TEM4,as well as the scores of the English test,they are divided into high and low level language groups.The study finds that compound word type has significant main effect,and the judgment time of true compound words is significantly shorter than that of control words.Regardless of language proficiency,all participants use the whole-word processing strategy for compound words.But the language proficiency affects the response time of subjects.The high language level group responds to the compound words significantly faster than the low language level group,and the time is shorter.The compound word processing of second language learners with high proficiency is quicker than that of the low language level.Secondly,semantic transparency has no significant effect and does not affect the processing of compound words.Whether the item words are semantically transparent or semantically opaque,there is no significant difference in the responses to the compound words for the high and low language level groups.Furthermore,familiarity has a significant impact on compound word processing.For the participants with both high and low language levels,the responsetime of the subjects to the item words is affected by the familiarity.That is to say,the higher familiarity results in the shorter response time and the lower familiarity leads to the longer response.Therefore,this study believes that in the practice of English teaching,teachers should pay attention to the teaching of compound words.For the English and Chinese compound words with similar structure,English teachers should make full use of the commonalities of the two languages to help students learn English compound words better.Also,in the process of teaching,English teachers can explain or practice the important or difficult compound words repeatedly,increase learners' understanding of the compounds,and strengthen the connection between new knowledge and existing knowledge structure.