An Empirical Study On The Organization Pattern Of L2 Mental Lexicon Of Senior High School Students

Vocabulary is the basic component of language,and vocabulary learning plays an important role in second language learning.Mental lexicon researches have explored the organization and extraction of vocabulary in the human brain from the perspective of psycholinguistics.Learners can use the connections between L2 mental lexicon to enrich their own L2 mental lexicon network to improve their vocabulary learning ability.In view of this,this study takes the vocabulary association test,on the theoretical base of Connectionist theory,Memory Deep Processing theory,Prototype Category theory,combined with the cognitive psychological characteristics of senior high school students,and explores the characteristics of senior high school students' L2 mental lexicon organization,so as to provide enlightenment for English vocabulary teaching in senior high school,and promote students' second language vocabulary learning and acquisition.This research aims to discuss the following issues by combining empirical research with relevant domestic and foreign research results:1)What is the main organizational pattern of L2 mental lexicon of senior high school students?2)Is the semantic response of L2 mental lexicon of senior high school students dominated by vertical aggregation or horizontal combination?3)What are the semantic responses of high-frequency words and low-frequency words of senior high school students?This research adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods.The whole experiment lasted 4 weeks including the vocabulary association test,questionnaires and interviews.The research subject is 100 students of senior one in a school in Yueyang,and data were collected.The experimental results were statistically analyzed by SPSS 23.0.The study found that: 1)The main organizational pattern of L2 mental lexicon of senior high school students is semantic response.2)The semantic response of L2 mental lexicon of senior high school students is mainly vertical aggregation response,supplemented by horizontal combination response.3)The senior high school students' semantic response to high-frequency words accounts for a large proportion,and there is less semantic response to unfamiliar low-frequency words.The aggregation reaction of high-frequency and low-frequency words is more than the combination reaction reaction.It shows that senior high school students must consciously adjust the organization of L2 mental lexicon,consolidate the existing semantic connections,and closely contact with low-frequency words with low familiarity.English teachersshould guide students to learn with different vocabulary learning strategies and promote vocabulary acquisition according to the characteristics of students' vocabulary memory.