英语论文网

hould be investigated, whichin turn can improve vocabulary acquisition.In the study of mental lexicon. Word Association Test (WAT) have been commonlyconsidered as a valuable tool to assess the organization of lexical knowledge ( Zerava, 2007).By analyzing language learners' feedback to the prompt words in WAT, linguists andpsycholinguists (Meara,1983; Soderman,1989; Cunningham, 1990; Wolter，2001, etc.) havegot deep insight into the lexical organization and how words are stored in the long-termmemory successfully. The more semantics links are made, the better word knowledge isstored in the mind.The present study is intended to get a better insight into the patterns and features ofChinese EFL learners' L2 mental lexicon by means of Word Association Test. It also tries toinvestigate the developmental way of the association type.

1.2 Significance of the present study
As mentioned above, since the 1980s，vocabulary acquisition has gained more and moreattention in the Second Language Teaching and Research with the development of linguistics,applied linguistics and psycholinguistics. Just as Meara pointed out in 1987, the past decadehas witnessed "exponential growth" in lexicon-oriented L2 research. The investigation on thenature of mental lexicon, concerning the storage and retrieval of words and how differentwords interact in the mind, has given preliminary answers to the question---how the L2learners’ lexicon is reorganized as compared with native speakers.While there are still some important questions for L2 mental lexicon requiring furtherinvestigation. For instance, the nature of the representations of L2 words in a learner'slong-term memory ； the state of semantic connections between words in L2 mental lexicon;the relations between the mental lexicon structures of the LI and L2; and the selective ornonselective access to the bilingual mental lexicon. Secondly, there is currently no generallyaccepted systemic pattern of how vocabulary is acquired (Schmitt&Meara, 1997: 18). Thirdly, there are not same opinions about the word association patterns and features in the differentstages of EFL learners’ mental lexicon, and researchers also have so many contradictoryviews on WAT. Fourthly, up to now, few researches have been made to find the developmentalway of the association type with varied word class, concreteness, and frequency.Following these lines, combining the research methodology and theoretical knowledge,

Chapter II Literature Review

This chapter is to give the definitions of some key terms, review theories and practicalstudies, and put forward unsettled issues relating to L2 mental lexicon.

2.1 Mental lexicon

2.1.1 The notion of mental lexicon
In the field of psycholinguistics, mental lexicon or internal lexicon, as an important partof language processing in one's mind, is usually referred to the representation of words inone's long-term memory. The attention to the mental lexicon can be traced back to the 19thcentury when researchers studied aphasia, but it is generally accepted that Treisman firstproposed the concept of mental lexicon from the viewpoint of language perception in the1960s. On the base of Treismarfs explanation (1960), the mental lexicon is usually defined asa repository of all the information that a language user has attained about words of hislanguage. In every speaker's mind, there is本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。