Effects Of Organization Patterns Of L2Mental Lexicon On The Proficiency Level Of Timed English Writing

The word organization pattern is an important dimension in mental lexicon. Most of the researchers studied word organization from the psycholinguistic perspective, while few researches are conducted with the combination of English writing from both the perspectives of corpus linguistics and psychology.This study aims to explore the characteristic of word organization of mental lexicon stored in L2learners’mind and further examine whether there is an effect of word organization patterns on EFL writing. In this study, syntagmatic relations and paradigmatic relations are mainly discussed.The60subjects in the study are all juniors from the English department of a comprehensive university in China. They are required to complete word association test, decision task of relations and English writing task. By analyzing the data from the first two tasks, the writer investigates the overall characteristic of the process of word organization of L2mental lexicon. Then, the thesis testifies the effect of word organization on English writing through analyses of decision task and English writing. The results of data analysis indicate the following findings:Firstly, subjects of high proficiency group produce more responses of paradigmatic relation and clang while low proficiency group produce more responses of syntagmatic relations. In both groups, the process of paradigmatic relations is faster than that of syntagmatic relations. Although no difference is found in the mean reaction time between the two groups, the accuracy of paradigmatic relations of high proficiency group is significantly higher than that of low proficiency group. It can be concluded that language proficiency affects the process of word organization.Secondly, frequency effect exists in the process of word organization. Participants produce more responses of high frequency words than low frequency words in each relation. Meanwhile, retrieval of word organization in high frequency words is faster than that in low frequency words.Thirdly, there is no correlation between English writing and speed of retrieval of word organization. Correlation is only found between mean score of vocabulary in writing and percentage correct responses of paradigmatic relations in high proficiency group. To some extent, word organization affects English writing.Theoretically, the findings of this research provide empirical evidence for the processing of word organization, and testify the relationship between word organization and English writing. Practically, this thesis discusses the pedagogical implications and the importance of word organization for L2productive knowledge, which provides some insight for L2teaching and learning.