Sensory Ratings Of English Words By Chinese EFL Learners:A Visual Perception-based Study

Sensory ratings measure the extent to which a word evokes visual,auditory,olfactory,gustatory and tactile experiences in the mind of the readers.The ratings can be used to test whether sensory dimensions have any influence on word processing.At present,many empirical studies of sensory ratings have been conducted in linguistics,psychology and other cognitive science related areas,which have lent support to sensory effects on word processing.However,most of the related studies are centered on native or first languages,and sensory ratings focusing on second languages are quite few.Therefore,this study aims to take vision as an example,which is regarded as the most important sense for human,to explore the effects of linguistic features or gender on visual ratings in English words among Chinese EFL learners as well as to make a comparative analysis on visual ratings between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers of English.Specifically,this study targets to build a L2 database of visual ratings,upon which four research questions will be explored:(1)What are the linguistic features of English words that are correlated with their visual ratings among Chinese EFL learners?(2)How are the visual ratings of English words dominated in modality?(3)Are there any gender differences in visual ratings of English words among Chinese EFL learners?(4)Are there any differences in visual ratings of English words between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers of English?This study carried out a test of visual ratings of English words among 682 Chinese EFL learners with a paper-and-pencil method.Based on the research data,this study found that:(1)Visual perception is closely related to word length and word frequency.The shorter the word,the stronger the visual perception but the lower the word frequency,the weaker the visual perception;and in terms of word class,nouns take the largest share among the top 50 high-rated visual words.(2)Most of the tested English words are visual dominant and multimodal,with nouns being the most multimodal.(3)No significant gender differences have been found in visual ratings of English words among Chinese EFL learners on the whole,but obvious gender differences do exist in specific categories of English words: words related to “animal” “drinks containing alcohol” “traffic” “politic or military areas” “metal” as well as “sound” seem to show higher visual ratings by males,while words about “the feeling of pain” “edible things”“negative emotion” and “actions of caring” tend to show higher visual ratings by females.(4)Visual ratings between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers of English are different,which means that native speakers of English have stronger visual experience through English words than Chinese EFL learners do in general.Based on the major findings,this study hopes to be helpful in second language teaching and learning.For one thing,teachers can guide students to invoke their sensory experiences so as to have a better and deeper understanding of the words being learned.For another,teachers are encouraged to adopt distinct teaching strategies in the process of teaching visual words with significant gender differences.Besides,teachers can create a more natural L2 context for students to experience a L2 word through visual modality or even by integrating all sensory modalities.