Download pdf
Review of Research on EFL Learners’ Mental Lexicon
- 1 Soochow University
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Research on the second language (L2) mental lexicon has become popular since this century, under the influence of literature on the first language (L1) mental lexicon. Among various L2, English is one of the most commonly learned second languages by non-native speakers all over the world. This paper reviews literature about major findings of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ mental lexicon through the results of word association tests, analyzed from three perspectives: syntagmatic responses, paradigmatic responses and form responses. Also, this paper summarizes some influencing factors of the results from empirical studies. By reading previous research on EFL learners’ mental lexicon, this paper tries to find out some pedagogical implications to help improve the efficiency of L2 vocabulary teaching. The findings of empirical studies show that EFL learners’ mental lexicon is quite different from native speakers. Although both groups’ mental lexicon is mainly associated with semantic responses, the specific links are distinct from each other. EFL learners are more likely to give form-related responses, but whether the proportion of syntagmatic or paradigmatic responses is higher varies in different experiments.
Keywords
EFL, L2 mental lexicon, word association
[1]. Meara, P. (1983). Word Associations in a Foreign Language: A Report on the Birkbeck Vocabulary Project. Nottingham Linguistic Circular, 11(2), 29-37.
[2]. Weinreich, U. (1968). Languages in Contact. The Hague: Mouton Publishers.
[3]. Wolter, B. (2001). Comparing the L1 and L2 Mental Lexicon: A Depth of Individual Word Knowledge Model. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, (23), 41-69.
[4]. Meara, P. (1984). The Study of Lexis in Interlanguage. In A. Davies, A. Howart, & C. Criper (Eds.), Interlanguage (pp. 225–235). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
[5]. Jiang, N. (2004). Semantic Transfer and its Implications for Vocabulary Teaching in a Second Language. Modern Language Journal, 88(3), 416-432.
[6]. Meyer, D. E. and Schvaneveldt, R. W. (1971). Facilitation in Recognizing Pairs of Words: Evidence of a Dependence between Retrieval Operations. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 90(2), 227–234.
[7]. Meara, P. (1978). Learners’ Associations in French. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin, 3, 192–211.
[8]. Zhang, P. (2010). A Contrastive Study of Mental Lexicon Association Patterns of Chinese EFL Learners. Foreign Language Teaching and Research,42(1), 9-16.
[9]. Jiang, N. and Zhang, J. (2021). Form Prominence in the L2 Lexicon: Further Evidence from Word Association. Second language Research, 37(1), 69-90.
[10]. Singleton, D. (1999). Exploring the Second Language Mental Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[11]. Cui, Y. Y. and Liu, Z. Q. (2010). An Empirical Study on the Development of Organizational Model of Second Language Mental Lexicon. Foreign Language Education. 31(2), 35-38.
[12]. Xie, M. (2009). The Nature and Development of Second Language Mental Lexicon. Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies. (4), 71-76.
[13]. Nissen, H. B. and Henriksen, B. (2006). Word Class Influence on Word Association Test Results. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, (3), 389-408.
[14]. Soderman, T. (1993). Word Associations of Foreign Language Learners and Native Speakers: The Phenomenon of a Shift in Response Type and its Relevance for Lexical Development. Abo Akademi: English Department Publications.
[15]. Piper, T. H. and Leicester, P. F. (1980). Word Association Behavior as an Indicator of English Language Proficiency. In Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) documents [online]. Available: Accession number ED 227651.
[16]. Palermo, D. S. (1971). Characteristics of Word Association Responses Obtained from Children in Grades One through Four. Developmental Psychology, 5, 118–123.
[17]. Agustin-Llach, M. P. (2022). How Age and L2 Proficiency Affect the L2 Lexicon. System, 104, 102697.
[18]. Jiménez Catalán, R.M. et al. (2013) ‘The Effect of Age on EFL Learners’ Lexical Availability: Word Responses to the Cue Words “Town” and “Countryside”’, Educational Linguistics, pp. 37–51.
[19]. Channell, J. (1990). Vocabulary Acquisition and the Mental Lexicon. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
[20]. Cangir, H. and Durrant, P. (2021). Cross-linguistic Collocational Networks in the L1 Turkish–L2 English Mental Lexicon. Lingua, 258, 103057.
[21]. Postman, L. (1970). The California Norms: Association as a Function of Word Frequency. New York: Academic Press.
[22]. Stolz, W. S. and Tiffany, J. (1972). The Production of “Childlike” Word Associations by Adults to Unfamiliar Adjectives. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 38–46.
Cite this article
Jiang,L. (2023). Review of Research on EFL Learners’ Mental Lexicon. Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media,28,54-58.
Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Disclaimer/Publisher's Note
The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s). EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.
About volume
Volume title: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies
© 2024 by the author(s). Licensee EWA Publishing, Oxford, UK. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Authors who
publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this
series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published
version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial
publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and
during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See
Open access policy for details).