Second Language Lexical Meaning Acquisition

Lexical acquisition includes the knowledge of its orthographical and phonological form, meanings, grammatical behavior, collocations, register, etc. The task of lexical acquisition in a second language is thus a complex and challenging undertaking for both teacher and student. The challenge could be further compounded by a multitude of cultural influences on the learning of a word, particularly in the meaning aspect of word knowledge. Lexis, as the most active element in language, conveys great amount of cultural-specific information and embodies social life. In lexical acquisition, if people only know the conceptual meaning of the lexis and has no idea of its cultural meaning, then they may find it hard to express themselves clearly and appropriately in daily conversation and this may even cause misunderstanding. Therefore, the acquisition of the cultural component of second language lexical meaning has become extremely important. This paper, from the perspective of acculturation, firstly, makes a survey study among the second-year English majors in DUT through vocabulary test and questionnaire in the purpose of examining their cultural meaning acquisition and investigating the present situation of vocabulary instruction and cultural embedment; then, with the help of SPSS, makes a statistical analysis of the data elicited from the vocabulary test and questionnaire survey so as to work out the correlation among vocabulary instruction and cultural embedment strategies and students' acquisition of the cultural component of second language lexical meaning. Some natural conclusions are drawn as follows: 1) The second-year English majors' acquisition of the cultural component of L2 lexical meaning is rather inadequate and unsatisfactory. 2) Quite a number of English teachers' cultural awareness in vocabulary instruction was not duly sufficient. 3) There is a correlation between vocabulary instruction and cultural embedment strategies and students' acquisition of the cultural component of L2 lexical meaning. Finally, based on the above conclusions, some pedagogical implications are drawn and some suggestions are given to the language teachers on vocabulary instruction for English majors from the perspective of a prospective English teacher.