Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Psycholinguistic Investigation of Second Language Lexical Acquisition

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Gretchen Sunderman女士将在Judith Kroll博士的指导下为她的博士论文收集数据。她的研究将探讨第二语言词汇流利性的发展。虽然第二语言学习者在课堂上试图压抑母语是一种常见的做法，但最近的心理语言学研究表明，这是不可能做到的。即使学习者只打算用第二语言阅读或说话，第一语言中的单词也是活跃的，并且会竞争选择。桑德曼的实验将包括三组母语为英语的人，他们的第二语言西班牙语熟练程度处于不同的阶段。她的目标是研究学习者习得西班牙语时第一语言的激活情况。一组实验将测试第一语言的理解能力，另一组实验将测试口语表达能力。参与者还将以母语进行一系列个体差异测试。将这些第二语言学习者与单语学习者进行个体差异测量的比较，将为第二语言学习对第一语言表现的一些认知后果提供检验。这项研究之所以重要，有几个原因。首先，它将促进我们对涉及第二语言词汇习得的认知过程的理解。其次，它将促进我们对不同第二语言水平的跨语言竞争的理解。最后，通过研究个体在第二语言理解和产生过程中抑制母语能力的差异，本研究将为第二语言教学提供信息，并提高第二语言词汇学习和教学的成功率。

ABSTRACTKroll & Sunderman 0111733With National Science Foundation support, Ms. Gretchen Sunderman will collect data for her doctoral dissertation under the direction of Dr. Judith Kroll. Her research will investigate the development of second language lexical fluency. Although it is common practice to have second language learners attempt to suppress their first language in classroom contexts, recent psycholinguistic research suggests that it is impossible to do so. Words in the first language are active and compete for selection even when learners intend to read or speak in the second language only. Ms. Sunderman's experiments will include three groups of native speakers of English at different stages of second language proficiency in Spanish. Her goal is to examine the activation of the first language as learners acquire Spanish. One set of experiments will examine the first language in comprehension, and another set of experiments will examine it in spoken production. Participants will also take a battery of individual differences tests in their first language. Comparisons of these second language learners to monolinguals matched on the individual differences measures will provide an examination of some cognitive consequences of second language learning for first language performance.This research is important for several reasons. First, it will advance our understanding of the cognitive processes involved in second language lexical acquisition. Second, it will advance our understanding of cross-language competition at different levels of second language proficiency. Finally, in examining differences in individuals' ability to suppress the first language during second language comprehension and production, this research will inform second language pedagogy and enhance the success of learning and teaching of second language vocabulary.