Nature And Development Of L2 Learners' Mental Lexicon: A Study Of Word Association Responses Of Different Levels Of Chinese Learners Of English

As lexical knowledge is known to be an absolutely crucial factor across the whole spectrum of L2 activities, linguists, applied linguists and psycholinguists have become more interested in it. L2 Mental lexicon is the focus of discussion in this paper, and the paper will include both L1 and bilingual mental lexicon, which can serve as a very useful basis for understanding the L2 mental lexicon. The connecting patterns of the L2 mental lexicons and the pedagogical implications would be the focus of the elaboration.The present thesis listed the L1 mental lexicon models (hierarchical network model, spreading activation model, search model, logogen model and cohort model), Jiang's model of L2 lexical representation and development and the models of bilingual mental lexicon.The present research studied the responsive patterns of three groups of Chinese learners of English (the advanced, intermediate and developing) to a word association test to find out the connecting patterns of L2 mental lexicons. With greater proficiency the L2 learners acquire, the respective responses to L1 word and its translation equivalent in L2 which they are familiar with are in the following pattern: semantically related word in L1; translation of L2—mutual translation—translation of L1; phonologically / orthographically related words in L2—translation of L1; semantically related word in L2. With the proficiency of the L2 learners develop, the L2 learners produced a high proportion of no responses to phonological/ orthographical related responses to unfamiliar L2 words.After obtaining a broad and direct outline of how L2 learners' mental lexicon is connected, we will come to deal with some problems we meet in the course of language teaching and learning. Based on such detailed discussions, some methods are proposed to help in the effective teaching and learning of English vocabulary. L1 should be used as little as possible in teaching and learning the L2 vocabulary. L2 learners should learn different types of word knowledge. More emphasis on word form (phonological/orthographical) should be put in vocabulary teaching.