A Study On English Lexical Access Factors Of Senior High School Students

Vocabulary learning is the central task of language learning, and there have been numerous related researches about it. As far as the lexical learning and students’current status are concerned, this paper is to study the factors including frequency, semantic priming, lexical ambiguity, morphological complexity and lexicality which evidently influence senior high school students’ lexical access. On the basis of the study result, implications for vocabulary teaching and learning are put forward.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One discusses the importance of the study on senior high school students’lexical access, research questions, as well as the organization of the paper. Chapter Two introduces concepts and theories about factors of lexical access and some researches abroad and at home. Chapter Three discusses the process of the experiment. In Chapter Four, the results and analysis of the research are fully studied. Some implications for vocabulary teaching and learning are put forward in Chapter Five. Chapter Six is the conclusion of the paper, including the limitations of the study and further study.Two instruments are adopted in the experiment in this thesis:vocabulary test and questionnaire, with the former focusing on factors including frequency, semantic priming, lexical ambiguity, morphological complexity and lexicality, and the later being supplementary to vocabulary test.According to the research, it is found that the most important factors for lexical access are frequency, semantic priming, lexical ambiguity, while morphological complexity plays more important role in Senior3students than it does in Senior1and Senior2students. Quite surprisingly, most of the senior high school students think that lexicality plays little role in their lexical access.The results show that it is important to know the role played by these factors for the vocabulary teaching and learning in the future and it is important to teach vocabulary concerning factors. Besides, it is also of great significance to help students to learn how to cultivate effective vocabulary learning strategies and to improve learning efficiency.