An exploration of the mental lexicon of Korean EFL learners = An exploration of the mental lexicon of Korean EFL learners

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Much research in second language (L2) word association has attempted to uncover the organization and development of the L2 mental lexicon. It has been suggested that the organization of words in the mental lexicon is dependent on links that facilitate the storage and retrieval of words (Wilks & Meara, 2002). Understanding these links and their properties can provide valuable information to L2 researchers and practitioners and inform L2 acquisition theory. Studies have shown that the type of word associations made by learners may be related to their L2 proficiency (Namei, 2004; Soderman, 1993; Zareva & Wolter, 2012). This study seeks to determine the lexico-semantic patterns of Korean EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners of different proficiency levels through a word association test. The findings of this study show that a group of low level learners had the highest proportion of syntagmatic responses while a group of L2 learners at high level had greater paradigmatic responses. In comparison to native speakers of English, both groups of Korean EFL learners had greater syntagmatic responses. This may suggest that the higher the English language proficiency of the speaker, the greater or stronger the semantic links are in the mental lexicon. The pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed and areas of further research are suggested.

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