The Roles Of Phonological Mediation In Mental Lexicon Access And English Learning

The purpose of the study is to investigate the roles of phonological mediation in English and Chinese mental lexicon access, and to search for the roles it played in English learning in China through experiments.Experiment 1 gives a series of questionnaire to the students to realize their English proficiency and their reading habits. Experiment 1 shows that:(1)the English proficiency of Group A is surely higher than Group B(2)They are significantly different in the movement of lips when silent reading, which means PM of Group B is much more obvious in mental lexicon access(3)Group A think they do not need Chinese as mediation since they are outstanding in English learning.Experiment 2 gives a text from TEM4 and 9 questions to Group A in order to prove that Chinese PM still play a very important role in the process of mental lexicon access of the subjects who are the outstanding foreign language learners.Experiment 3 gives a fact that the subjects’ the first response to the English words before they access the reference of the word is Chinese.Overall, the results from these studies show that for a Chinese English language learner whose proficiency of English is not high, PM phenomenon is special obvious and need more time. He or she unconsciously takes English as mediation between the substance of a word and their mother tongue, instead of directly accessing the meaning by English. In this way, the speed of access of word meaning of English is doubled than that of word meaning of L1. The speed a Chinese English learner accessing the meaning of English word is related with his level of English proficiency and the way he or she is taught. The content of the mental lexicon access of English is directly connected with the original ways of learning.