A Case Study of Digital Natives Using English Buzzword cue in Vocabulary Capacity in Second Language Acquisition in China

Abstract

With the increasing fragmentation of people's reading habits and the prevalence of attention distractions, internet buzzwords, which focus on capturing the essence of events and reflecting the sentiments of the masses, have emerged and gained immense popularity online. However, even though there has been a series of research on this type of buzzword in China, most of the research on buzzwords tends to be limited to exploring the words evolution and their application in a certain region, leaving a huge gap in the relationship between the use of buzzwords and users vocabulary competence. Taking the buzzword cue which is a typical Anglo-Chinese style expression, for example, the case study tries to provide a new perspective in hopes of finding out the appearance of vocabulary capacity in internet buzzwords. The proposed research will employ a mixed-methods approach, integrating semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. The former will be used to compare different kinds of digital natives comprehension of the buzzword cue after dividing them into 3 groups by their frequency of using electronic products. Simultaneously, a corpus of comments or responses will be gathered during the focus group discussions, aiming to discern any potential correlation between vocabulary competence and the use of buzzwords.