台灣大學生英語詞彙熟悉度習得年齡評定

Abstract

本研究主要目的是建立台灣大學生對3080個英語詞彙的熟悉度以及習得年齡評定指標，研究的成果可提供未來進行台灣大學生英語字詞辨識研究時，選取刺激材料的資料庫。本研究徵求120位大學生，請受試者先針對字詞進行認識與否判斷。受試者針對判斷爲認識的詞彙，進一步評定熟悉度以及習得年齡。利用本資料庫進行回歸分析，發現一個英文詞的辨識度、熟悉度、習得年齡間彼此呈現高相關；而熟悉度、習得年齡、音節數目等三個因素，都對英文詞的辨識率有重要的影響。

Frequency, familiarity, and age of acquisition are important factors for word recognition that must be considered by researchers of language acquisition. Current psycholinguistic databases, based on studies of native English speakers, include objective frequency count, subjective rating of familiarity, and age of acquisition. One can easily employ those databases to obtain a stimulus list for one`s studies. For word recognition researchers interested in non-native English speakers in of Taiwan, however, there is currently no existing database. In this study, we created a psycholinguistic database which includes subjective familiarity rating and age of acquisition for 3,080 English words. Participants were 120 college students in Taiwan. They were asked to make judgments about 4,000 stimulus words. For recognized stimulus words, participants gave a rating of familiarity and self-report of age of acquisition; for non-recognized words, participants were asked to move on to the next stimulus word. Further analysis of the database showed that familiarity index, age of acquisition, and number of syllables are important factors for the recognition of a word. Variance in word recognition ratings for each factor was explained and implications were discussed.