二语水平对二语词汇表征及加工的影响研究-英语语言文学专业论文.docxVIP

Abstract Since second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition has been drawn the attention of psycholinguists and applied linguists, mental lexicon has become a popular research area for them in recent decades. Mental lexicon is defined as the representation of words in our permanent knowledge. To explore how L2 words are represented and stored can improve the quality of vocabulary acquisition. Previous studies attempted to reveal the nature of L2 mental lexicon for Chinese English learners, ignoring language proficiency (English proficiency). However, no agreements were reached for the nature of L2 mental lexicon, that is to say, the question needs to be examined. Besides, whether L2 proficiency has an effect on semantic representation and processing is another question that has not reached agreements. The present study aims to assess the effects of L2 proficiency on bilingual lexicon presentation and processing. We designed the translation priming research from L2 to L1 performed by 60 students: highly proficient L2 learners and less proficient L2 learners, with 30 English junior majors from one college in Jiangxi province and 30 students in Senior Grade One from one high school in Jiangxi province. 80 English primes, 80 Chinese targets and 80 Chinese non-words were the tested materials, including 60 prime-target pairs obtained from a free association task. Thus, 60 translation prime-target pairs, 20 semantically unrelated prime-target pairs and 80 Chinese non-words were used in the L2–L1 priming experiment. A lexical decision task of the masked priming paradigm designed by E-prime is used in which the critical trials consist of Chinese targets proceeded by English primes. The independent variables in the experiment were designed as 2 (translation prime-target pairs and semantically unrelated prime-target pairs) × 2 (highly proficient L2 learners and less proficient L2 learners), with response latency and response accuracy as the dependent variables. In the experim