Chapterl Introduction
1.1 Research Orientation
English teaching plays an important role in China's education system. ThusChinese students start learning English from primary schools to universities. That is tosay, each undergraduate would leam English for at least 14 years. According to therevised English teaching syllabus made by the Ministry of Education, students musttake at least 1950 class hours to leam English. They do spare no effort to leam English.However, after more than 14 years' studying of English，the intermediate-advancedEFL learners, undergraduate for example, still find it difficult to express themselvesnaturally in English. Although some of them can reach the syllabus's requirement tomaster 5000 to 6000 words and expressions, or tl^ey can pass CET4 even CET6 at ahigh mark，most of them express themselves in a too simple or obscure way. Forinstance, a college sophomore uses "listen stealthily" instead of “eavesdrop”，or "in alow voice" instead of "in a hushed voice". Anyhow, they wouldn't speak or writeEnglish naturally.The reason why Chinese EFL students can,t express themselves naturally after somany years study is that their encoding ability is much lower than their decoding ability.If we study on China's English college entrance examinations，we can find that only thelast part is to test students' writing ability or their encoding ability. This part only takesabout one fifth in the whole examination. The papers of CET4 and CET6 also face thesame problems. Listening and reading comprehension are key topics. These tests leadteachers and students to focus on decoding ability while neglect encoding ability.
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1-2 Research Questions
This thesis is expected to answer the following questions:
1. How does LLA organize words and expressions that have associative relation ina key concept? And what are the word associative networks of these concepts?
2. To what extent can Chinese EFL learners activate the concepts chosen fromLLA? And what are their word associative networks?
3. What are the similarities and differences between these two networks?
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Studies on Paradigmatic Relation
There are two kinds of relations among words and expressions: paradigmaticrelation and syntagmatic relation. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships are twofundamental linguistic relations which describe the complex structure of languagesystem. Syntagmatic relation combines words to make a discourse an orderly system.Paradigmatic relation describes the relationships between the elements of a paradigmwhich can be replaced by each other. Saussure called this substitute relation as“associative relation” at the beginning, while scholars are used to using RomanJakobson's term “paradigmatic relation" instead at present. 111 his book Course in General Linguistics, Saussure (1974) raised the notion ofassociative and syntagmatic relation. Saussure believed that everything depended onrelations in a linguistic state and they worked in different ways. Thus he differed therelations and differences into two kinds syntagmatic relation and associative relation.The two kinds relations correspond to humans' two different forms of mental activityand they're both indispensable to language. The two relations is an important dichotomyof structuralism linguistics.3
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2.2 Studies on Production Dictionary
Simply speaking, lexicography is about the principles and practice of dictionarymaking. The concept of the onomasiological dictionary presupposes the converserelation between onomasiology and semasiology. Although that volume of a bilingualdictionary which leads from the user language to the foreign language is essentially anonomasiological dictionary，the term “onomasiological dictionary" commonlydesignates a monolingual dictionary. Under that proviso, an onomasiologicaldictionary is a dictionary which is organized by semantic criteria and thus leads the userfrom concepts to expressions. There are two kinds of onomasiological dictionaries asdistinguished by their macrostructure: thesaurus and synonym dictionary.Between semasiological and onomasiological dictionaries, A distinction can bemade as follows. Semasiological dictionaries consist of an alphabetical list leading theuser from the word to its meanings. By contrast，the idea behind an onomasiologicaldictionary is to help the user to find the appropriate word for a particular meaning orconcept. Various techniques are used in the attempt to achieve this aim.The classic example of an onomasiological dictionary is Roget's Thesaurus, inwhich words are arranged in hierarchies under more general terms (hypemyms, alsocalled superordinates). Thus, the terms sofa and settee may be found listed underfurniture. Another technique is to provide lists of synonyms and antonyms for aheadword, in the hope that one of them may be the term that the user is looking for. Anexample of an onomasiological dictionary that helps users to discriminate betwe# nearsynonyms is McArthxir's Longman lexicon (1981). Another kind of onomasiologicallexicography is the compilation of terminological databases. In a world of increasinglycomplex engineering and technology in a multilingual environment，vast on-lineterminological databases serve vital needs for standardization of terminology for. manyspecialist communities.
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Chapter 3 Word Association Network of LLA........ 14
3.1 Main Design Features of LLA........ 14
3.2 Construction of Word Association Networks of LLA2........ 22
3.2.1 Methods and Standards to Choose 10 Key Concepts........22
3.2.2 Networks of the 10 Key Concepts ........23
3.3 Analysis on the Word Association Network of LLA2........ 32
Chapter 4 Methodology........ 33
4.1 Questionnaires for Chinese EFL Learners........ 33
4.2 Construction of Chinese Learners，Word Association Network........ 37
4.3 Analysis on Chinese EFL Learners' Network........ 38
Chapter 5 Conclusion, Implication and Suggestion........ 40
5.1 Conclusion ........40
5.1.1 Similarities........ 40
5.1.2 Differences........ 40
5.2 Implications........ 42
5.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research........ 42
Chapter 4 Methodology
Chapter 3 shows us neat and clear paradigmatic word association networks of the10 key concepts in LLA. And it is sure for us say that our Chineseintermediate-advanced EFL learners couldn't have such networks. What we need to payspecial care is that how far we Chinese intermediate-advanced EFL learners need to goto reach such levels LLA provides. In order to estimate their paradigmatic wordassociation ability, three tests are carried out in two classes in Shaanxi NormalUniversity. Then we get our students' networks of the 10 key concepts in LLA. The tests are carried out in the author's university—Shaanxi Normal University,which is a rather high-level university in China，especially in the northwest China. Thestudents of this university are relatively good. The participants we choose to have thetests are all sophomores whose majors are not English.There are totally 2 classes to participant in the tests that have different majors, one. #IS mathematic science，the other is human resources. 85 students finished thequestionnaire and from them we choose 50 valid questionnaires. The other 35 students'questionnaires are not qualified for the study because they give blank answers or thepapers they hand in are obscure to study. That is to say, the 50 students are our finalparticipants. As a normal university, it is unavoidable that most of the participants arefemale.
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Conclusion
By contrasting the networks of the two kinds, It is clear that networks of LLA aremuch more abundant than that of Chinese EFL learners. There are still severalsimilarities.Firstly, for adjectives，students can activate the opposite related words at verybeginning. Opposite related words are an distinguished part of networks of adjectives inLLA. It is a kind of easy access to get an adjective word by its opposite word.Secondly, the words Chinese EFL learners activated are all listed in the beginningof each meaning. That is to say, the words we Chinese EFL learners mastered are justthose words LLA firstly recommends.Thirdly, all the activated words，especially adjectives，belong to different parts.Although there are not many words that Chinese EFL learners can remind of, thesewords can be separated into different parts. For example, the words of "beautiful" canbe parted into related words, adjectives and nouns. This phenomenon tells us that wordsin students" mental lexicon are classified into different parts which just fit with theorganization of networks of LLA, but the students themselves may not know.
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Reference (omitted)
