Research On The Frequency Effect And Context Diversity Effect In Chinese Word Recognition By Intermediate And Advanced International Students In China

Word frequency has been considered as a critical role in word recognition for a long time.Frequency effect has been found not only in the first language word recognition research,but also in the second language.However,as the research progressed,it was found that it was contextual diversity,not word frequency,played a critical role in word recognition.Are there contextual diversity effect and word frequency affect existing in Chinese characters and words recognition process among the second language learners?This study aims to do the Chinese characters decision task and the words decision task among the middle-and high-level internatinal students to explore the frequency effect and contextual diversity effect in both Chinese characters and words recognition.In experiment 1,the character decision task was used to examine the frequency effect and contextual diversity effect in Chinese characters recognition among middleand high-level international students.The participants were required to make judgements on three Chinese character groups(high-frequency low-contextual diversity group,high-frequency high-contextual diversity group,low-frequency low-contextual diversity group)and the false characters.Their response time and correct rate are recorded.It was found that there is a significant contextual diversity effect by comparing the response time and correct rate.when the contextual diversity of Chinese characters is controlled,there is no difference in response time datas between high-frequency group and low-frequency group,and there is no difference in correct rate as well.It means that frequency has no effect on Chinese characters recognition among middle-and high-level internatinal students in China.When the frequency of Chinese characters is controlled,the response time of high contextual diversity is shorter,and the correct rate is higher,which means that there is contextual diversity effect in the process of Chinese characters recognition among middle-and hingh-level international students.In Experiment 2,the lexical decision task was used to examine the frequency effect and contextual diversity effect in Chinese words recognition among middleand high-level international students.The participants were required to make judgements on three Chinese word groups(high-frequency low-contextual diversity group,high-frequency high-contextual diversity group,low-frequency low-contextual diversity group)and the false words.Their response time and correct rate arerecorded.It is found that there is a significant contextual diversity effect by comparing the response time and correct rate.When the contextual diversity is controlled,the word frequency effect disappears;when we the word frequency is controlled,the contextual diversity effect still exists.Lastly,this study makes a further analysis and discussion of the conclusions based on the mechanism of word recognition,and puts forward some constructive suggestions for the teaching Chinese characters and vocabularies in TCFL.This study provides some experimental evidence for the existence of contextual diversity effect in word recognition among second language leaner,and also provides some new ideas and enlightenment for teaching Chinese characters and words as a second language.