Abstract
Through use of word association as detailed in McCarthy (1990) this paper will explore pedagogic implications derived from the following three points in relation to the lexical development of Japanese learners of English: 1) the ability of word association tests to examine the mental links between words in learners' developing mental lexicon, 2) the importance of phonological similarities for lower level students and 3) the correlation between the results from a word association test with the characteristic types of word association patterns discussed in McCarthy (1990). It will be argued that while lexical development within the mental lexicon is difficult to delineate due to overlap of organizational categories, the patterns of syntactic, semantic and conceptual relations between learned words is apparent within the retrieval process for word association and that additionally, context may play a vital role in how words are construed along the links within the mental lexicon. Pedagogic ideas and future research ideas are detailed.
