Abstract
Vocabulary plays a major role in concept formation, acculturation, articulation, and all aspects of learning. Unfortunately, although learners may have internalized complex vocabulary through formal learning, they may not have the ability to retrieve known words and concepts or have access to the right words, or lexical access, effectively. This study explores the lexical access patterns of second language speakers of English (ESL). Fifty students from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, participated in this research. Twenty-five represented the more proficient ESL speakers whereas the other 25 represented the less proficient ESL speakers. Four pieces of paper, each with a high-frequency word (i.e., “man”, “people”, “time”, “day”) printed at the centre of the paper, were distributed to the participants as stimuli for them to create four sets of semantic maps. This paper thus presents a qualitative analysis of the semantic mapping of the word “man” and results show that English language proficiency does affect the way participants activate the words from their mental lexicon. The frequency of the words that were activated from the word “man” in the participants’ environment also affects the mapping. The semantic maps produced by the participants reflect ESL speakers’ pattern of lexical access, particularly in the manner the words are categorised in their mental lexicon. This study proposes that semantic mapping activity can be used to reflect and analyse ESL speakers’ vocabulary development, as well as to reflect ESL speakers’ weaknesses in accessing words and their thought patterns in the English language.
Highlights
The size of an individual’s vocabulary has always been used as the yardstick to measure his or her intelligence and cultural development (Gerstenberg, 2015; Mohd Nordin, Stapa & Darus, 2015)
Studies on vocabulary knowledge have often been focusing on the pedagogical aspects such as vocabulary learning strategies (e.g., Asgari & Mustapha, 2011; Kulikova, 2015), incidental vocabulary acquisition in extensive reading (e.g., Ghanbari & Marzban, 2014; Webb & Chang, 2014), and vocabulary acquisition in several conditions (e.g., Sadeghi, Ellis & Khezrlou, 2017; Teng, 2016)
This, according to Nadarajan (2011) and Sulaiman et al (2018), happened because learners may have internalized larger and complex vocabulary through formal learning, they may not have understood how the words should be used in their writing
Summary
The size of an individual’s vocabulary has always been used as the yardstick to measure his or her intelligence and cultural development (Gerstenberg, 2015; Mohd Nordin, Stapa & Darus, 2015) This is due to the fact that vocabulary plays a major role in concept formation, acculturation, articulation, and all aspects of learning (Gerstenberg, 2015). Unlike L1 speakers, L2 speakers are not regularly being exposed to the large vocabulary of their target language (Kaur; 2015; Mohd Nordin et al, 2015) This is because not all of the words in the L2 vocabulary are relevant in the L2 learners’ daily conversation (Sulaiman, Salehuddin & Khairudin, 2018). This, according to Nadarajan (2011) and Sulaiman et al (2018), happened because learners may have internalized larger and complex vocabulary through formal learning, they may not have understood how the words should be used in their writing
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