An Investigation into the Development of Lexical Organization of Chinese Tertiary English Majors

1. An Investigation into the Development of Lexical Organization of Chinese Tertiary English Majors Cui Yanyan Liaocheng University 2007.5

2. Outline Research Orientation Research Background Research Method Results Limitations & Suggestions Implications

3. Research orientation This study explores the developmental features of lexical organization of tertiary English majors in China.

4. Research background • Lexical organization is an important dimension of lexical competence, and it is mentioned in several models of lexical competence.

5. Meara’s framework (1) vocabulary size (2) lexical organization (how rich a lexical structure of word links in a lexicon) (3) speed of access

6. Chapelle’s framework (1) vocabulary size (2) knowledge of word characteristics (3) lexical organization (the way in which words and other lexical items are stored in the mental lexicon) (4) fundamental processes of lexical access

7. Qian’s framework (1) vocabulary size (2) depth of vocabulary knowledge (3) lexical organization (which denotes the storage, connection, and representation of words in a learner’s mental lexicon) (4) automaticity of receptive-productive knowledge

8. Jiang’s framework (1) vocabulary size (2) depth of vocabulary knowledge (3) lexical organization (4) automaticity of lexical access (5) Lexical semantic autonomy

9. Mental lexicon and lexical organization • “Our mental store of words and basic information about them is called the mental lexicon”(Bock & Levelt 1994:950). • The large amount of words in the mental lexicon and the marvelous access speed with rare errors imply that “words cannot be heaped up randomly in the mind”(Aitchison 1987: 5). • The spreading activation model seems to be promising in delineating the pattern of lexical organization. (e.g. Collins & Loftus 1975; Bock & Levelt 1994)

10. Word association studies • One of the research paradigms that explore the organization of the mental lexicon most directly involves the use of word associations. • The underlying assumption is that automatic responses will consist of words that have the strongest connections with the stimulus word in the subjects’ mental lexicon. By analyzing associations, we can gain clues about the mental relationships between words and thus the organization of the mental lexicon.

11. Two lines of research • One line of research is to evaluate whether the L2 mental lexicon is organized in the same way as the L1 mental lexicon. Another line of research is intended to assess whether nonnative speakers’ associations are similar to those of native-speakers The ultimate goal of these two lines of research is similar, i.e., to investigate the nature of L2 lexical organization. (e.g. Meara 1983; Söderman 1993; Schmitt 1998; Singleton 1999; Wotler 2002; zhang 2003; Bai 2005).

12. Two controversial conclusions about L2 lexical organization • The organization of L2 mental lexicon is basically phonologically-driven while that of L1 mental lexicon is semantically-based. • Both L1 and L2 mental lexicons are structured semantically and to what degree a word is linked with other words semantically is determined by how well the word is integrated into learners’ internal lexicon.

13. Unsolved problems • Which view can reflect the reality of L2 mental lexicon? • The developmental features of L2 lexical organization is inadequately tackled and demonstrated.

14. Conceptualization of lexical competence • Lexical organization refers to the storage, connection, and representation of words in the learner’s brain. It is concerned about the structure of words in the mind of an L2 learner, indicating characteristics of word links as a whole. • The well-structured lexical organization is defined in this research as learners’ ability to produce semantic associations to the stimulus words.

15. Research design The research design of the present study was that of a cross-sectional one, or in R. Ellis’s (1994) term, a pseudo-longitudinal one, in which the lexical organization achieved at a single time across varying L2 learning stages are interpreted as the development over a period of time.

16. Subjects

17. Instruments • Questionnaire • Test of receptive vocabulary size (VLT) • Instrument: 40 stimulus words taken from the Kent-Rosanoff word association list with strict selection procedure(The test instruction required the learners to respond to the stimulus word by writing down the first word inspired by the stimulus by their intuition.)

18. Means and standard deviations of scores on VLT of the four groups of subjects

19. Classification model in this study • no response • clang–other: responses which were phonologically related to the stimulus words e.g. STOVE-solve (clang) SLEEP-slept ; STOVE = SOLVE (other) • paradigmatic associations: (1) those conveying identity and inclusion (hyponymy, synonymy and meronymy), and (2) those indicating opposition and exclusion (incompatibility, complementarity, antonymy and converseness) (Cruse 2000) e.g. BUTTERFLY-insect • syntagmatic associations: a link between words that could be joined together in a well-formed syntagmatic structure. e.g. BEAUTIFUL-girl • Encyclopedic associations:links to an encyclopedia of world knowledge e.g. CHEESE-picture

20. Question 1 • Is there a shift from a more phonologically-based pattern to a more semantically-based pattern concerning the organization of L2 mental lexicon of the subjects across four learning stages? • Statistical procedures: descriptive data, Chi-square test

21. Frequencies of associations in five categories for the four groups

22. Semantic and non-semantic associations • Semantic associations contain paradigmatic, sintagmatic and encyclopedic associations. • Non-semantic associations includes clang-other responses and no-response cases.

23. Frequencies and proportions of semantic and non-semantic associations for the four groups of subjects

24. Question 2 • What are the developmental features of the subjects’ associations classified as ‘no-response”, “clang-other”, “paradigmatic”, “syntagmatic”, and “encyclopedic” across four learning stages? • Statistical procedure: Chi-square tests

25. Mean proportions of no-response associations for the four groups

26. Mean proportions of clang-other associations for four groups of subjects

27. Mean proportions of paradigmatic associations for four groups

28. Mean proportions of syntagmatic associations for the four groups

29. Mean proportions of encyclopedic associations for four groups of subjects

30. Findings of the qualitative inspection of the five categories • The analysis of the clang-other responses shows that L2 learners often misperceive some stimulus words and thus produce unclassifiable responses. • The L2 subjects tend to make responses belonging to the same word families as the stimuli, irrespective of their learning stages. • Year Three and Year Four subjects produce more sophisticated and abstract paradigmatic and syntagmatic associations than Year One and Year Two learners. • Some encyclopedic responses exhibit the influence of L1 semantic or conceptual system on the organization of L2 mental lexicon.

31. Question 3 • What are the characteristics of the subjects’ responses to the stimulus words of different frequency levels? 20 high frequency stimuli 20 low frequency stimuli

32. Frequencies and proportions of semantic and non-semantic associations for high frequency and low frequency stimuli from the four groups

33. Mean proportions for semantic and non-semantic associations for high frequency and low frequency stimuli from the four groups

34. Findings • Word frequency has bearing on the response types, and its effect is more robust on Year One and Year Two learners than on Year Three and Year Four subjects.

35. Question 4 • What are the coincident responses between the subjects in the four different groups and native speakers? • Corpus-based approach and Wordlist • Findings: Subjects in Year Three and Year Four yield more coincident responses with native speakers’ associations than those in Year One and Year Two.

36. Implications • The findings of this research show that the subjects even in advanced learning periods tend to organize their L2 mental lexicon in a phonologically-driven pattern, pointing to the necessity of establishing a meaning-based and web-like network of L2 internal lexicon to facilitate effective lexical retrieval.

37. Limitations of the present research • Population generalizability the sample size of 200 subjects is not large enough, though they are matched with each other as similar as possible) • Methodological limitation

38. Directions for future research • Macro-level studies (replication and longitudinal studies) • Micro-level studies (This study takes the high frequency words as stimuli. Further research can track the development of associations of newly learned words by adopting a microgeneric paradigm (Wen, Yu & Zhou 2004). Data of the associations can be frequently collected in several short intervals to reveal how new words are acquired and integrated into the existing lexical stock.)

39. Thank you.