A Study On English Word Association Pattern Of Chinese College English Learners

Word association studies have developed in psycholinguistics as a window to learners’ mental lexicon organization.In empirical studies,participants were given one stimulus word(or cue word)and were asked to produce one word or more than one word coming first in their mind which were thus named the association responses.In literature of word associations in the context of second or foreign language learning,many studies investigated learners’ L2 word associations through comparing with native speakers.Some studies also investigated the relationship between word associations and some other factors such as language proficiency,vocabulary familiarity and vocabulary knowledge.Importantly,word association studies aimed to explore learners’ mental lexicon structure in L1 and L2 through word association pattern.However,their findings of learners’ word associative pattern in L2 mental lexicon remain inconsistent.One controversial issue is whether the association pattern of L2 learners fundamentally differs that of the native speakers? This study aims to 1)investigate the word association pattern in Chinese EFL learners;2)explore the possible factors that influence the development of L2 word associations;3)gain an insight into Chinese college English learners’ organization of L2 mental lexicon.In this study totally sixty-six Chinese college non-English majors from a national key university(985 Project)and of the second tier of undergraduates participated.Fitzpatrick’(2006)categorical framework of word associations and a discrete response procedure are used.This study firstly investigates the word associative pattern in Chinese EFL learners and then tentatively compares the word associations between two groups of learners with different language background,specifically,different L2 proficiency,different learning experiences and different vocabulary instructions they have received.Data for comparisons are analyzed using independent t-tests in SPSS.Finally we attempt to gain an insight into the organization of L2 mental lexicon.Results show that Chinese college English learners were most able to produce the form-based associations and rarely produced the syntagmatic associations,while they also produced the erratic associations roughly as many as the meaningful associations.It also shows that as learners’ language knowledge changes,their associative pattern did not fundamentally change.This study implies that Chinese foreign language learners’ English mental lexicon is in some aspects uniquely organized.Firstly,their word associations are scattered into all categories but not form-phonology dominated as assumed by some researchers.Secondly,the investigation of learners’ L2 word associations at one stage does not assume that the structure of their mental lexicon is static.Thus from a developmental perspective,this study finds that,Chinese college English learners’ word association pattern does not fundamentally change.However,previous studies tend to hold that learners’ increasing of language proficiency leads to their approaching nativelike associative pattern,this study assumes that the mind of a bilingual is not the same as that of two monolinguals.Native-like language proficiency does not ascertain that their internal lexicon knowledge is same as native speakers.Therefore,it cannot be ignored that other learning-based factors may play important roles in learners’ developing word associations.It reveals that learning experience based factors and cross-language influences will influence the process of Chinese college English learners’ vocabulary learning,which characterizes the structuring and development of their English mental lexicon.This study assumes that learners’ L2 word associations cannot be simply understood in virtue of comparing with native speakers.The organization of learners’ L2 mental lexicon is to some extent uniquely characterized.