Relations Between Chinese Learners' L2 Mental Lexicon And Their Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Three main types of word connections in mental lexicon were proposed: paradigmatic, syntagmatic and phonological. It is widely accepted that the connections of words in the native speakers'mental lexicon are primarily semantic while it is controversial concerning L2 mental lexicon. Some factors such as word frequency, learner's proficiency level and the depth of individual word knowledge have been found to influence the way of organization and operation of L2 mental lexicon. This study aims to explore whether there is any relationship between the use of vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) and L2 mental lexicon.The subjects were 50 second-year non-English majors from Sichuan International Studies University. The instruments were a guided Word Association Test, an Individual Word Knowledge Test and a VLS Questionnaire, apart from a Vocabulary Levels Test and a Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge Test used in the pretest. The data analyses revealed the major findings:Some VLS are closely related to the organization of mental lexicon. Specifically, all VLS except formation and phonological association correlated positively with paradigmatic responses, with semantic association, meta-cognitive and dictionary use strategies revealing significant positive correlations (at the level of 0.01). Phonological responses correlated negatively with most of VLS, among which note-taking, semantic association, meta-cognitive and dictionary use strategies reveal significantly negative relationships. Only formation strategy correlated positively with phonological responses.In addition, another study was conducted to prove the effect of the use of VLS on mental lexicon. Subjects from two parallel classes were divided into a control group and an experimental group. After 8 weeks of VLS training, the posttest demonstrated that the experimental group employed VLS more frequently and produced more semantic responses than the control group. Therefore, appropriate use of VLS does facilitate the establishment and strengthening of the links in learners'mental lexicon.Some pedagogical implications are proposed on the experimental basis. L2 learners should reorganize L2 mental lexicon to strengthen the semantic links through the proper use of VLS. And it's necessary to raise learners'awareness to use VLS appropriately and to give them instructions and training.