An Empirical Study of the Organization and Affecting Factors of Chinese as L2 Mental Lexicon in Thai University Students
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Abstract
The purpose of this research was to investigate the nature and features of the organization of Chinese mental lexicon of Thai university students, and to analyze the affecting factors of the organization of a Chinese mental lexicon in Thai university students. The sample consisted of 240 second to fourth grade students randomly sampled from 2558–2560 students who were majoring in Chinese at the school of sinology, Mae Fah Luang University. The instruments employed to collect data were free association testing and interviewing. The results of the study were as follows: First, the nature of the Thai university students' Chinese mental lexicon is semantic, but it is still in the first language lemma mediation stage. The semantic responses are dominated by paradigmatic responses and by modified association, dominance association, and declarative association. Second, the Thai university students' Chinese mental lexicon has a paradigmatic to syntagmatic response transition trend in line with the improvement in Chinese ability, but the degree of change is not large and is still dominated by paradigmatic responses. Third, word frequency, part-of-speech, word formation, and familiarity of stimulating words have different degrees of influence on the types of responses. Based on the findings, a summary of guidelines for teaching Chinese vocabulary to Thai students are as follows: (a) reduce the insertion of Thai language; (b) hidden practice for students to get used to memorizing relevant vocabulary and the ability to connect vocabulary without knowing; (c) focus on teaching words that are often in pairs, synonyms, close meanings, opposite words, or a variety of meanings of verbs and adjectives; (d) increase the frequency of word exposure and usage of words.
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