Testing Conceptual Routes in Elementary/Highly Proficient Persian Speaking EFL Learners

Abstract

According to a basic prediction made by the revised hierarchical model (RHM,Kroll & Stewart, 1994), there is no L2 conceptual connection at the beginning<br /> stages of language learning as L2 learners mostly rely on L1 conceptual connections to retrieve the meaning of the L2 words.With increasing proficiency, however, there would be a direct access from L2 to the conceptual system. Available literature challenges this hypothesis, as it shows the existence of the L2 conceptual<br /> connections from early stages of L2 acquisition (Duyck&Brysbaert, 2004). There is one study which supports this hypothesis however, it is problematic in the<br /> sense that it used a long prime exposure duration (Basnight-Brown &Altarriba, 2007).<br /> In an attempt to reevaluate the prediction of this model, two groups of highly proficient and two groups of elementaryPersian learners of English were tested<br /> on noncognate stimuli with lexical decision task in both forward and backward direction. The results obtained for elementary L2 learners were consistent with<br /> RHM. The data showed the presence of strong L1 conceptual connections and the absence of L2 conceptual connections at this level of proficiency. However, the<br /> pattern obtained for highly proficient L2 learners could not be interpretedin terms of the model.