| Popis: |
The present study investigates whether or not Japanese college students whose English vocabularies differ in size construct structurally distinct L2 English mental lexicons (ML) of nouns, and whether the way that the lexical items in their ML are connected with others retains any characteristic features. The study aims at confirming the findings of Orita, Kobayashi, Murasato, Kamimoto, Yoshii, and Lavin (2013), which revealed structurally marked distinctions in the L2 English ML of verbs between two participant groups (Japanese college students) having different vocabulary sizes are reflected in their L2 English ML of nouns. A free word sorting task using 24 English nouns were given t0 30 college students with a small vocabulary size (4426.7, SD = 755.3) and 30 college students with a large vocabulary size (5778.3, SD = 690.8), whose vocabulary sizes were significantly different from each other (t (58)=7.233, P < 0.05, two-tailed).Permutation tests (number of generated random permutations = 5,000) indicated that noun structures in the ML were statistically significantly different from each other between the two participant groups. The sorting task results also showed that participants searched for and retrieved lexical links by activating semantic networks in their MLs, and this finding applied particularly to the large vocabulary size group. Some pedagogical implications for teaching vocabulary are proposed. |
